Next month, on April 1st, ScotRail returns to public ownership. It was last in public ownership in 1997 when the privatisation legislation of 1994 of the then Conservative Government, led by Prime Minister John Major, came into effect.

It is a change that speaks volumes about the current SNP-led Scottish Government. It is one that has been welcomed by the travelling public and by the four unions representing the workforce. And yet, the transfer to the public sector will disappoint many of the expectations of the public and workforce. Indeed, the transfer on April 1st may prove to be quite unpropitious, being more of an April Fool than many might initially realise.

This is because public ownership will be in the new neo-liberal form of state commercialism – a state company and not a core part of the Scottish state itself. In other words, ScotRail will operate on pretty much the same principles as before when it existed in the private sector.

Let’s take a step back and recall that this was a move made by the SNP Scottish Government after years of running out of conventional capitalist options under the franchising system. The utterly dismal record of the last franchise holder, Abellio, on a number of fronts, critically including customer service and industrial relations, has been the culmination of 25 years of privatisation and craven profit-seeking, starting with Stagecoach and followed by FirstGroup. Indeed, things got so bad with Abellio after being issued with umpteen improvement notices that the Scottish Government had little option but to establish a state-owned operator of last resort, Scottish Rail Holdings, in order to take over and provide ScotRail services.

But already, the signs in the stars are becoming somewhat ominous for those hoping for improvements in the service to the travelling public and the way the workforce is treated. For example, cuts to ticket offices and services announced before 1 April are to be maintained.

And, there is evidently no political will to have worker representatives on the board of Scottish Rail Holdings in order to ensure the voice of the ScotRail workforce is not only heard at highest level but has an influence too. This shows the SNP-led Scottish Government has dismissed the opportunity to implement and extend its own “Fair Work” flagship policy where it most easily could be, namely, in operations it has direct control over. “Fair Work” aims to make Scotland a “Fair Work” nation by 2025. It is based upon five principles including “effective voice”, “security” and “respect”.

Instead, the new senior management team at Scottish Rail Holdings are not over-endowed with experience of running public transport. This team has announced its intention to downgrade its workers’ terms and conditions by “levelling” them down to those of other parts of the public sector, meaning ending a no-compulsory-redundancies policy which was, ironically, part of the franchise agreement with Abellio. There is also the prospect of cuts to the extent of unions’ right to negotiate over pay and conditions. This could well lead to industrial action - which would be a baptism of fire for the new company.

How has this strange situation come about? On the one hand, the SNP claims to be a left-of-centre, social democratic party. And now it is supported formally by the more left-leaning Scottish Greens, following the coalition pact of August 2021. On the other hand, public ownership of strategic infrastructure and services is rightly favoured as a way to not only deliver better – more efficient and more effective – outcomes for the populace but also to introduce some elementary level of industrial democracy into the running of these operations. Moreover, there is a link between the two – contented workers provide better services to the travelling public.

Fundamentally, the resolution to this riddle comes about by understanding the nature of the SNP. Its claim to be social democratic is a hollow one when it still prefers to use private sector logic and capability to deliver public services. It wants a smart and successful form of Scottish capitalism to be able to generate the taxes to pay for its social welfare policies - and so will brook no opposition to anything that stops this Scottish capitalism being given the best chance to be profitable.

All this goes to show that state ownership is necessary but not sufficient to lead to good outcomes. Here, we only need to recall that Abellio was stated owned - by the Netherland state, turning on its head one of the best quips from former RMT rail union leader, Bob Crow. He said the issue was not the lack of state ownership of the railways in Britain but the ownership was by the wrong state.

So, state or public ownership must be of a genuine social democratic bent where the perspective is not to save private ownership from itself by bailing it out and then returning it to private ownership. Neither must it be to run the railways like a capitalist company. And, it must not be a re-run of British Rail which suffered from constant under-investment and which was run in a high-handed manner by distant senior civil servants.

So, if the SNP’s claim to be social democratic is to mean anything, especially when supported by the Scottish Greens, it must be to operate public services on non-market principles, so spurning neo-liberalism and its managerial madness. This means putting issues of public service provision and industrial democracy front and centre.

If the SNP does not attempt to do so, it will be following its already well-trodden path of talking left but acting right. Other instances of this are easily found, whether it be the selling off of licences to windfarms to the big energy operators of private capital in a belief that this would lead to achieving the green politics goal of protecting the environment, or allowing private companies to help provide the soon-to-be-created National Care Service.

Gregor Gall is a visiting professor of industrial relations at the University of Leeds

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