Grant Shapps under fire for bizarre videos and ‘zero interest’ in railways

theguardian.com:

He’s the unflappable frontman and loyal defender of the errant “big dog” in Downing Street. Through the lens of Conservative politics, the transport secretary Grant Shapps is on a winning streak.

But as crisis looms in a key part of his day job – running the railways – a series of bizarre interventions have raised eyebrows and hackles. Just what, the industry is wondering, is going on with Shapps and the Department for Transport?

Rumbling disquiet has erupted into outright condemnation in some quarters, at a time when the biggest rail union, the RMT, has launched a national strike ballot, against a backdrop of lost revenue, deep cuts and an uncertain future.

While the pace of promised reform and investment has been slow, Shapps has promoted personal wheezes that parts of the railway industry believe are, at best, misguided, and smack of YouTubing while Rome burns.

Allies of Shapps say the videos, shot at speed on a minimal budget, reach fresh audiences – and a minister hamming it up has proved relatively viral. Employing the acting talents from his past life as Michael Green, when he had a job as a get-rich-quick marketeer, Shapps has rattled off films vowing to end “irritating” train announcements, announced a public vote to choose where to site the railway’s head office, and rebranded a minor ticketing promotion as the Great British Rail Sale.

Another Shapps production – explaining moves to tackle noisy cars – was expected to drop this weekend.

Few railway figures have openly aired discontent, but others off the payroll have come out blazing. In a blistering editorial, Nigel Harris, the boss of industry publication Rail, described Shapps, a keen pilot, as the least-engaged secretary of state he had come across in 25 years,