The magic of levitation

The Tories are trying to work out the best way to develop our transport network, including consideration of the installation of a magnetic levitation (MagLev) railway line, or the extension of the Channel Tunnel rail link as a British equivalent of the French TGV high-speed rail link. The businessmen who will fund, develop, and operate any new rail services will doubtless be delighted that the politicians have removed from them the necessity of making a commercial assessment of the best solution. After all, politicians are so much better at this sort of thing.

Or will the Tories, who privatised the rail network when they were last in power, be introducing new services like this under state control? How far has their transformation into "New Labour Lite" (or possibly even "Old Labour Lite") proceded? Does the seriousness of the problems that these ideas are intended to address - global warming and enabling a more sensible distribution of economic activity and population across the country - somehow blur the lines between what government is good at and what business is good at?