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Ok. Maybe this is what particularly distinguishes me from many on this thread, in that I genuinely don't care who provides services if they are provided for a good price, and publicly funded.
I don't really see why that is 'radical', or even actually particularly centrist, if it's a means to increasing the provision of state funded services to people overall.
It feels needless to me to criticise more the means of provision of the service than the level. (And the right are equally guilty when they argue that the state shouldn't own anything so things being privatised is inherently good).
I do completely agree that a lot of the time, a market solution doesn't work for things we typically want to be provided. But that's a different argument to the one you seem to be making.
andyfallsoff-
It feels needless to me to criticise more the means of provision of the service than the level.
This is the difference between pragmatism and ideology / idealism imo. I'm with you - I can see the value in public ownership, private enterprise, and public private partnership, they're just different tools which should be used in different situations. But I think many people make a fetish of public services in the same way the tories do for private enterprise, when the reality is that each has its own strengths. Anyone who's worked for the NHS knows that it's an incredibly wasteful organisation. Anyone who's worked in private enterprise knows that the efficiencies often come at the expense of the workforce. Done right, public-private partnerships might be the best of both worlds; done badly it can be the worst of both.
ReekBlefs
More support for the marketisation and competition, and a decreasing role of the state in the public sector, then, which I would describe as less support, and others* may describe as moving "beyond left and right" to a position in the "radical centre" where capitalism is viewed much less critically.