An then there are the facts:
Eurostar is owned by a French/Belgian/British/German consortium and the British part is owned by a company called London Continental Railways. The British government hold only one third of the shares in this company.
Like many other things that New-labour have done this under-the-channel rail service has been split up between many companies and state-owned European entities and when British Rail was privatised this was also privatised too.
The private companies that hold the franchises for many essential services in Britain are able to pay their shareholders dividends that are subsidised by taxpayers money and this is how they are able to work in the so-called free-market system.
The German part of Eurostar is owned by Deutsche Bahn ( DB ) - a totally state-controlled entity in Europe - and they are at the moment trying hard to buy the British privatised company that runs the UK end of the service. They plan to extend the French SCNF holdings well into many more of the German cities if they do get to control the British end of this multinational entity.
NOW....to why the service failed so badly:
It appears that the design of the trains was not good enough to withstand the changes in temperature between out of the tunnel and inside the tunnel and first thoughts are that condensation formed on electronic parts that could not withstand such temerature changes.
This can not be blindly or narrowly blamed on the British government even if this might be seen by some as just another good strong stick to beat the British government with.
See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Continental_RailwaysAnd this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar