The Stamp of Success?
Hugh Gault charts the long-running debate over the privatisation of the Post Office amid rising competition and shifting political agendas.
'History never repeats itself exactly. But patterns recur because the contexts in which human beings have to act repeat themselves, more or less', as Robert, now Lord, Skidelsky put it in his 1967 book Politicians and the Slump. The question of whether the Post Office should be a business has been around for almost as long as the service itself and certainly since the 1920s. But when the question was carefully explored in the 1930s the answer was 'no', as it was in the early years of this century – though only just. However, in 2013 Britain's coalition government sold off Royal Mail. The government retained the pension liabilities and a minority stake, as well as having the ultimate responsibility for the Universal Service Obligation (USO).
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