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The Guardian article does not make it clear that public operation of the ScotRail franchise is only an interim measure, because it would be economically impossible to conduct a franchising competition at the moment and the UK Government has still not published its proposals in response to the Williams review. Although transport is largely devolved, the Scottish and Welsh Governments have to work within the UK legislation that requires franchises to be tendered. The pre-Covid plan was to have a public-sector bidder for the next ScotRail franchise, possibly a subsidiary of David MacBrayne Limited https://www.david-macbrayne.co.uk/ the parent company of CalMac Ferries Ltd.
It will only be when the UK Government brings forward its plans for the future of rail passenger services that a permanent way forward in Scotland can be determined.
@Londoner
What goes around comes around. In the late 1980s, the view in the Scottish Office was that CalMac was so inefficient that some kind of injection of competition was needed to try and sort it out. I contributed to a study to design some kind of a ferry route tendering system, like bus tendering, that might be part of such a reorganisation. It never happened.
At the same time, CalMac had had their arm twisted to order a ferry from a Scottish yard, rather than the Norwegian supplier they favoured. The Scottish Office apparently had a flexible approach to the benefits of competition. When the ferry was launched. It was found to be so far overweight it was beyond the sliding penalty clause in the contract, and well into the zone they could just refuse the ship. It had unacceptable consequences for the ferry’s payload. It was due to basic failures to build the ship with the materials specified by the architect. The ship ended up being stretched, and the shipyard had to pay for alterations to ports to accept the longer ship. A sad story of the sorry state of British industry in those days.