RICHARD BOWKER, chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, will this week attempt to stem fears of a creeping renationalisation of Britain’s railways by saying that state control of the network has a “stake through its heart”.

Rail-company bosses were stunned last week by Bowker’s abrupt decision to strip Connex, the French transport company, of its southeast franchise, one of Britain’s biggest single train companies, carrying 300,000 commuters a day between Kent, Sussex and London.

Bowker said he had lost confidence in the company, and that it had missed several financial targets. Connex executives were given no advance notice of the decision.

Some train-company executives said yesterday that the decision risked spooking City institutions, which were still smarting from the government’s decision to pull the plug on Railtrack in October 2001.

“It reinforces the idea that the railways are a political football,” said one credit analyst.

But Bowker will tell a rail conference on Tuesday that neither he nor ministers have any intention of taking control of the network. One SRA source said: “What we are saying is that it is up to the public sector to specify what it wants, and the private sector to deliver.”

Meanwhile, the quoted bus and rail group Go-Ahead has emerged as early favourite to take over the running of the southeast rail franchise.

Two years ago Go-Ahead and its French partner, Keolis, an arm of SNCF, the French state-owned railway, took over the running of Connex’s other London operation, South Central. It is judged to have made a good job of operating Thameslink, another commuter franchise.

Chris Moyes, Go-Ahead’s deputy chief executive, said yesterday the company would be interested in bidding for the former Connex routes. “It is clearly something we would be interested in, but we will have to take a good look at what the SRA is proposing,” he said.

Stagecoach, which runs South West trains, the main Waterloo commuter operation, is another contender, although senior executives were cautious yesterday. National Express and Serco, two other quoted rail operators, are unlikely to enter the race, but Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail company, is tipped to bid.