There’s an enigma in Labour’s stance on Ipswich Buses. The Labour Party knows that if the buses remain in municipal hands without any help, then as the second smallest bus operator in the country they will be susceptible to a strike from First Group. First Group could, as it has done to other small operators, run services three minutes ahead of Ipswich buses on the largest routes and offer all the Ipswich Buses staff a signing on bonus. An Ipswich Labour administration could then be stuck with closing down Ipswich buses. This would be a stick that the Tories would beat them with for years.
This nightmare scenario is perfectly plausible, because it’s been done already with other operators. So that leaves some odd options. Perhaps Labour are criminally short sighted, and this may be true at the Prime Ministerial level but I can’t believe that it’s true at a local level. An alternative is that they’ve got a plan B that is not that different from what’s being done at the moment. Essentially do the same deal with a group (not necessarily Go Ahead, but certainly not First) which is sell a minority stake and preemption rights in return for money, bulk buying power and management expertise as well as a virtual guarantee that Ipswich Buses will not go down.
The way they could differentiate it would be to say that instead of selling 49% they would sell 20% and in return retaina a greater degree of control. Would it satisfy the activists?
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