| > That great except you haven't explained how TFL exists at all. Are all the lines privately owned and operated? All national rail lines (including Overground and TfL Rail) are privately operated in general; they're only ever nationalised on a short term basis when something goes wrong with the privatised operations. London Underground falls under a different regulatory regime (as does Tyne & Wear Metro and, without checking, presumably the Glasgow Subway) and I believe they have a derogation to permit that. > That's why we were so enthusiastic to get involved in Iraq 2. I won't defend that war but I haven't seen any convincing argument that it was against English law. Royal prerogative is pretty broad, and Blair lying to parliament is not a crime as far as I know. > The truth is, laws are just an excuse for governments about why they "can't" do things people want. Don't want to nationalise trains? Blame some obscure foreign law. Even if that's the only effect of EU law, it's corrosive to democracy. Whether it's because of real EU laws or because they can lie about them and get away with it, EU membership has destroyed the accountability of British politicians. E.g. in the aftermath of the leave vote, there was a lot of reporting saying that the UK could have put restrictions on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria without leaving the EU. Which is true, but misses the fact that - despite it being what the majority of voters wanted - that was completely outside the Overton window of UK politics, because the UK political class wanted unrestricted immigration. So practically speaking, voting to leave the EU was actually the only way to achieve that. > And that's without getting into why we never bother to try and enforce all these laws ourself? If DB are an illegal state company, why not say so in court? Instead we give them contracts, because we're a law abiding country that ignores laws when awarding contracts to foreign entities but not domestic ones which is illegal!? The European Commission did pursue cases against Deutsche Bahn and others. Under the English law implementation of the same EU directive a structure like Deutsche Bahn's is illegal (because the Duck Test applies); the ECJ ruled it legal (while acknowledging that it was a loophole that was clearly against the intent of the law, and recommended that the next version of the directive should explicitly make it illegal, which was done). But in many ways all that is moot, because even where the ECJ ruled that there was illegal state aid to railway operators (e.g. Spain), there was no practical punishment. |