In 2012, when Sir Richard Branson was first threatened with the prospect of being kicked off the west coast franchise, he offered to run it for free. “I ... would happily run the extended franchise on a not-for-profit basis, or donate profits to charity,” he wrote.

At this point, Virgin could easily have shouldered a few barren months or even years. By 2012, Branson’s group had already pocketed around £180m in dividends from a public transport service that it had operated since 1997.

Instead, Virgin managed to secure a two-year contract extension, the run-it-for-free pledge was forgotten and the firm has continued to make considerable sums from the London-to-Glasgow route. Its share of dividends now stands at more than £300m, and the issue of whether railways should be a not-for-profit enterprise ought to rear its head once again.

But this time the arbiter of that choice should be the taxpayer and government ministers, not private operators, who rarely seem to be held to account by the system.

Branson and his venture partner Stagecoach (which has made a total of just under £300m from its involvement over the past 22 years) have once again been shunted into the sidings following a clash with the government over pension payments for rail staff. The situation is a mess, not least because the government appears to have shifted its stance on the private sector’s responsibility for pension deficits in the rail industry.

It is another example of the muddled policymaking that has allowed franchise operators – the most high-profile remnants of a once entirely privatised industry – to make millions while accountability has been applied inconsistently.

This lack of consistency has, largely, benefited the private sector, while simultaneously undermining the rationale of the franchising system. Virgin and Stagecoach were stripped of the east coast franchise last year after admitting they could not meet the promised £3.3bn in contract payments, but were under no obligation to meet that forgone financial promise. It was the third time in 12 years that a private operator had been removed from Britain’s most prestigious rail route after failing to deliver the billions of pounds they had promised to the taxpayer.

Neither of these cases sparked much of a public outcry because, in reflection of what matters most to passengers, safety and punctuality records on east coast have not been disastrous. This is thanks to a UK-wide, multibillion-pound investment programme underwritten by the state and carried out by Network Rail, the government-owned operator of tracks and stations.

On top of this bedrock floats an inchoate franchising process under which private operators can quit onerous contracts while making £300m each in dividends on the more successful routes, whose success is due in large part to heavy taxpayer investment. If this is a sensible balance of risk and reward, successive governments and franchise operators are still struggling to make a convincing case.

Virgin Trains argues that it has paid £970m back to the government in franchise payments over the past five years alone. The £600m dividend, over 22 years, is the counterpoint, and the opacity of the franchising system makes it difficult to judge whether an appropriate balance has been struck.

Now that Virgin Trains is out of the running on west coast after refusing to back a multibillion- pound deficit in the rail staff pension fund, it is telling that the only contenders left are ones that feature heavy state involvement: a consortium including the Italian state rail company (in partnership with FirstGroup); and another made up of Hong Kong’s state-controlled metro operator plus the Chinese government-backed Guangshen Railway.

One way or the other, the west coast franchise is set to revert to a form of state ownership. It just won’t be the British state.

Brexit delay doesn’t solve anything

For almost three years, no one in Britain has had a clue how Brexit will turn out. The delay until the end of October, agreed last week, means the sense of national doubt will not lift for at least another six months.

Delay was the least worst option for the economy. Leaving without a deal last week would have trashed it, with the potential for a two-year recession forecast by the International Monetary Fund. But the pause presents fresh difficulties for an already beleaguered economy.

Businesses have spent the past two years since article 50 was triggered planning for a spring 2019 Brexit. Stockpiling has reached unprecedented levels for a G7 nation and firms have ploughed significant resources into contingency plans.

Business investment for the future, outside Brexit planning, has stalled. But planning for a no-deal departure has, perversely, given the economy a short-term lift. Growth in the month of February was 0.2%, exceeding forecasts of zero, as stockpiling drove a jump in activity.

Companies could now run down their stocks, leading to weaker levels of growth over the coming months. But failure to address Brexit quickly would mean needing to ramp stocks back up again before a nightmarish Halloween no-deal scenario.

There is little sign the impasse will be broken quickly. Domestic politics could well fall back into chaos after the Easter break. Theresa May could be unseated and a snap election called. The chance of a second referendum still remains.

Some businesses will be unable to survive the turbulence, having spent huge sums on no-deal planning for March only to see the goalposts moved. The uncertainty means companies will inevitably refrain from investing, paving the way for weaker growth in future. The Bank of England is almost certain to keep interest rates on hold for longer.

The Brexit delay is a welcome breathing space that must be used by MPs wisely. But it will not fix the troubles facing the economy alone.

We could do so much better on pensions

We’ve become rather self-congratulatory about pensions in recent years. Auto-enrolment, which has made all employers (however small) offer private pensions, is all the things that Brexit is not. It’s a long-term plan. It has cross-party support. It has been welcomed by the public. We can put it in the almost entirely vacant space called “great British parliamentary successes this decade”.

The Office for National Statistics gave us further reasons for a pat on the back last week. It said 76% of all workers in the UK were now members of a private pension plan, a huge increase from 47% in 2012, when the scheme started. Others have either opted out or earn below the £10,000 a year trigger point for joining the scheme.

It’s great so many people have joined, and so few have opted out. Who knew there would be such an appetite among the young and middle-aged for pension planning?

But will they, in the long term, be disappointed? The TUC thinks so: it points out that seven in 10 workers get contributions from their employers of less than 4% a month. In pension terms, that’s peanuts.

Britain is so far behind countries such as Australia, it’s embarrassing. In the UK, the minimum employer contribution is 3% (it inched up from 2% at the start of the month), while in Australia it is a compulsory 9.5% on everything someone earns above £250 a month. Australians have saved close to £1.5tn into their “super” funds. In the UK, with more than twice Australia’s population, our biggest auto-enrolment fund has accumulated just £4.5bn so far.

The softly-softly British approach has one advantage – it has got employers on board with relatively little bleating. But it’s time to be far more ambitious. The Australians have put employers on a path to raising minimum contributions to 12% by 2025. We should share that ambition.