No Experience at all, No Worries

Louise Haigh, our ever-fiery Transport Secretary, is clearly no stranger to waving red flags—both metaphorically and literally. The striking crimson streak through her hair isn’t just a style choice; it’s a battle standard for her lifelong war against corporate malfeasance and worker exploitation. P&O Ferries, with its Dickensian sacking of 786 employees by Zoom, must have seen her coming like an old-school Bolshevik at a capitalist cocktail party. Unfortunately, while Haigh’s flair for union-baiting rhetoric may make her a darling at Labour conferences, there’s something truly absurd about a woman with as much transport experience as a glider pilot trying to run Britain’s infrastructure.

This is, after all, the same Louise Haigh whose professional experience before stepping into the Department for Transport involved…well, none of the usual pre-requisites for overseeing our national highways, railways, and ports. She’s never run a ferry, driven a bus, or even tried to navigate the inexplicably complex task of purchasing an Oyster card in London. Instead, her CV boasts of two years as a local council youth worker and a stint in corporate governance at Aviva, which might come in handy if buses start needing insurance policies.

But here she is, wearing her shock of red hair like a political exclamation mark, laying down the law on P&O Ferries and swearing never to work with them again. It’s a brilliant speech if you’re still operating in the world of protest politics—a rousing cry against the big bad capitalist wolves. But here’s the problem: governing isn’t protest, and transport isn’t Twitter. It’s all well and good to denounce “rogue operators,” but what exactly is the plan when the rogues are the ones with the ships, the ports, and the ability to laugh off your indignation while still hauling freight across the Channel?

How Does Haigh Get the Job? (Spoiler: Competence Not Required)

It does beg the question: how exactly does someone like Haigh get this job? It’s like appointing someone who’s only ever played SimCity to be the chief urban planner of London. Sure, she’s passionate—if the hair wasn’t enough of a clue, just listen to her speeches—but there’s something quite entertaining about how Westminster shuffles its personnel. Need someone to run education? No worries, grab an MP who barely scraped through their GCSEs. Need a Defence Secretary? Well, why not pluck someone who’s never been closer to a military operation than watching Top Gun on Netflix? And as for transport? Ah, just pick someone who once tweeted about a train delay—Louise, that’s your cue.

The lack of experience is so farcical, it’s almost charming. Until, of course, you realise that these people are actually responsible for keeping the country moving. Louise Haigh, with her union background and righteous anger at corporate malpractice, is now tasked with navigating the complexities of a transport network that’s already lurching between strikes, delays, and infrastructure collapses. Forget rogue operators—how long before Britain’s transport itself starts looking like a rogue operation?

Red Hair, Red Flags, and a Rogue Minister

Of course, Haigh’s red flag-waving extends far beyond her vivid hair dye. The 2022 P&O Ferries scandal was practically custom-built for her brand of tub-thumping indignation. After the company gleefully axed its entire UK seafaring workforce via Zoom—earning itself the corporate equivalent of a public flogging—Haigh has barely been able to stop herself from kicking them while they’re down. “Rogue operator” is the kind of language she no doubt fancies looks tough, but what she’s actually doing is akin to standing on the side of the motorway shaking your fist at an HGV. It might make you feel righteous, but it’s not going to slow anything down.

Yes, the P&O affair was a shameless exercise in corporate cost-cutting at the expense of workers who were, rightly, furious. Yes, the company’s behaviour was morally repugnant, even by modern capitalist standards. But in case anyone missed it, P&O isn’t exactly losing sleep over Louise Haigh’s stinging rebukes. DP World, its Dubai-based parent company, which owns ports across the globe, probably treats those words like an amusing after-dinner anecdote.

While Haigh was busy making sure she put as much distance between her department and P&O Ferries as possible, her boss, Sir Keir Starmer, was bending over backwards to keep Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem—the CEO of DP World—interested in a lucrative investment summit. You can picture the scene: Starmer’s flunkies ringing up DP World with a polite cough: “Yes, apologies about the Transport Secretary, she’s, well, new. Bit excitable. Anyway, we’d love for you to still drop a few billion on our shores…”

It’s a perfect example of what happens when you mix rookie politicians with real-world economic powers. Haigh, fired up with moral outrage and a fresh mandate, blunders into a diplomatic landmine. You can almost hear the smug laughter echoing through the skyscrapers of Dubai. Not that the Sultan needed any help feeling superior—his wealth could probably fund the entire ferry industry if he wanted, P&O Ferries included. But there’s a certain satisfaction in watching a politician wave their red flag furiously while the rest of the world’s money flows away, completely unbothered by the show.

Governance in a World Where Cash Is King (And Ferries Don’t Care About Feelings)

Here’s the truth Haigh will eventually have to confront: governing isn’t about moral purity, and the world’s wealth isn’t sitting around waiting to be re-educated by left-wing firebrands. DP World and its ilk couldn’t care less about what Louise Haigh thinks of their management style. They care about investment returns and trade routes. If they can shrug off 786 redundancies with a smug grin, they’re hardly going to lose sleep over a minister calling them naughty names.

But the real question is: can Haigh adjust? Her union credentials and red-tinted indignation may have got her through the door at Westminster, but they won’t help her negotiate with the Emirates or find a solution to the endless rail chaos facing the country. In fact, it’s hard to see how any of her previous roles—important as they might have been—actually prepare her for the logistical nightmare of Britain’s transport. Youth work? Sure, that’ll help when the next train strike causes commuter riots. Insurance policy governance at Aviva? Excellent—she can explain why the delay in roadworks is covered under ‘acts of God.’

The Politics of Rage vs. The Reality of Roads

But perhaps Haigh’s biggest challenge is realising that while righteous fury might win applause from unions and left-leaning pundits, it rarely keeps the trains running on time. Politics has a nasty way of humbling the passionate, and Haigh’s bold declarations about P&O and “rogue operators” may come back to haunt her. In the real world of global trade, foreign ownership, and cutthroat capitalism, Britain’s transport network is less a battleground for ideological warfare and more of a fragile, complicated, cash-hungry beast.

If Haigh’s approach is going to work, it needs more than verbal fireworks and hair that doubles as a semaphore for worker solidarity. It needs hard-nosed realism and the ability to navigate the diplomatic waters between furious unions, voracious corporations, and a public that just wants their trains to turn up on time without bankrupting them.

Until then, she’ll keep waving her metaphorical red flag, a bold, bright beacon of protest in a world that’s increasingly deaf to ideology. Let’s just hope the ferries—and the rest of Britain’s transport—manage to keep afloat in the process.