I put this poll on Twitter yesterday:
Let me say straight away, and before anyone else does, that I anm aware that such polls are not scientific. There is, of course, bias within my reasons for posting the poll, the questions, those I reach and those who choose to vote. Without much effort you could extend that list.
So, let me reveal my bias. I wanted to test whether Labour's preferred plan for Thames Water, based on what I hear that is is saying internally, might be popular amongst those I reach, who are likely to have a bias towards voting Labour.
That preferred Labour option is to bail Thames Water out and to return it to the market. It is certain it will not nationalise it in the long term, if at all.
The poll reveals the unpopularity of this option. I guess someone must have voted for it, but that number has not as yet ever been sufficient to record as even 1%, however many votes were cast at the time that I looked.
In other words, it seems fairly certain, even given the biases within this poll, that Labour is choosing what its natural supporters think the worst possible option for water.
Why would they choose to do that?
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Neoliberal ideology is passing the baton from Conservative to Labour. Failed water privatisation. Failed domestic energy privatisation. Failed railway privatisation. Failed Post Office. Whether Conservative or Labour (there is no substantive difference), privatisation cannot fail. If privatisation hasn’t worked, it hasn’t been privatised enough: Trussonomics.
Modern free market ideology in Britain today is to command that where there must be monopoly supply (because there is only one line, cable, pipework; whatever for the buyer to use); it must be a private monopoly producing monopoly profits for rentiers; but dressed up as pretend ‘competition’ in a fake market to con the elector; and that is all the conservative-Labour Westminster Cartel is prepared to offer the public. That is why there is actually only one Party, united on the only two things that matter to the Conservative-Labour Party: neoliberal private sector monopoly, and FPTP to keep Conservative-Labour in monopoly power in Parliament.
It is all so obvious it is a political cartel in the service of a common ideology. Everything else is window dressing.
“If privatisation hasn’t worked, it hasn’t been privatised enough“. I love this and will shamelessly steal it (hmm, what does that remind you of?)
Me too, and this one
It is all so obvious it is a political cartel in the service of a common ideology. Everything else is window dressing.
Excellent commentary.
Kind words. Steal what you will. Be my guest.
The Government, Parliament and Post Office have been stealing people’s lives for over twenty years. Private theft now seems to be a public virtue under Neoliberalism….. I would gift you the words, but why should they have all the best scams?
“That preferred Labour option is to bail Thames Water out and to return it to the market”
To quote Albert Einstein:
“You can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
But we all know why Labour have chosen their course of action: Follow the money.
Will Labour will rescue English water companies using cash raised via UK tax bills?
I hope not.
Scotland had the good sense to retain water in public ownership but would pay for Thatcher’s (and successive Westminster Government’s stupidity) through our raised payments to HMRC.
No wonder we’ve not voted Labour or Conservative for 15 years.
Labour are still running scared o fthe Tory backlash at any hint of nationalisation or any progressive policy labelled woke. Labour leadership seems blind to the fact that even Tory voters favouir water coming under public control. The grip that the Blair/Medelsoson/Streeting cabal have on Labour will be their undoing if Labour wins the general election.
I become conspiratorial over Labour’s position: the arguments deployed against — no time no money — are so clearly spurious. How long did it take to nationalise some banks in 2008? bonds are issued (and amount to be paid for a bankrupt company little). There has to be some other reason for their reluctance — does the financial sector and Peter Mandelson object?
Good to see you here Malcolm
Your point is very apposite
How long? Almost overnight in the case of Northern Rock…..
Water nationalisation was of course a commitment in the 2017 Labour election manifesto. If only…
Indeed….
“Why would they choose to do that?”……because, as I noted in a post on the Gordon Brown charity fiasco, LINO is not interested in what either its members or voters think or want.
“Soundings will have been taken”, positions formed – & LINO leaders will not upset the UK boat.
The water saga has lots of interlocking interests, thus whilst there is some anticipation of a changing of the guard/gov (one bunch of incompetents with another?), the current narrative from LINO is – “we are a safe pair of hands” & implicit in this is no nationalisation. I anticipate words about “tougher regulation” (who will enforce these? with what resources?) and “clean rivers for Uk citizens” (or similar slogans )- but in parallel, there will be quiet words with the sewage merchants, help us & we will help you.
The main difference between the election profiled in Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (two identical parties) and now is, social media/the Internet. This needs to be leveraged to show that LINO is the same as the tories: mendacious, hungry for power (its our turn!!) and uninterested in the welfare of Uk serfs. Reinforcing this: I see that LINO will deploy Union Jacks – just like the Tories/Liberals in 1905.
“Why would they choose to do that?” The answer might be quite straightforward — those in charge of Labour are Tories at heart. Tell me it ain’t so.
I can’t
Because you’re right
The ability of the government / Labour to unravel the privatised water companies will be constrained by the commercial lenders, who provided the £ billions of debt, having likely secured their loans preferentially against the assets of Thames Water.
And just how are they going to exercise that security?
Will they try to deny London water?
Really?
Perhaps they could sell the pipes for scrap copper. That should be a vote winner, don’t you think? I am sure Steptoe & Sons could help out with a few fire sales of the vans, desks, etc. Then you can issue some buckets so everyone can walk down to the Thames. Free exercise into the bargain. As for the sewage, well makes good fertiliser so just spread it on the garden. What, you are in a flat …
I understand that there is a class of debt called “odious debt” which can be repudiated.
One way to take over the companies, at low cost, is to impose penalties (for sewage release) that are…. exponential.
Then make a modest offer for the “assets” keeping in mind what the owners over the years have extracted.
Creating these liabilities is easy
The regulator has to demand that these companies make provision for the cost of creating clean water – as the extractive and nuclear power industries have to make priovision for clearing up their waste.
They are then all insolvent
While JohnL has an overly simplistic view of the world, I think he stumbles on an unfortunate truth. While the Government CAN disenfranchise senior secured lenders via legislation, it won’t. It’s not contract law that gives the banksters the upper hand. It’s that they have so much to offer semi-retired ex-ministers.
I think the Labour leadership are already sowing the seeds of their own eventual electoral demise.
Their collective inability to imagine anything anywhere outside of the neoliberal groupthink that seems pervasive amongst all our political leaders.
Neoliberalism has been a catastrophic failure it’s disasters are all around us from our crumbling hospitals and schools to our bankrupt councils and failing institutions.
The neoliberal dogma that has brought all this and more visa vie Brexit has demonstrably shown it does not and never will work but our political class live down the westminster rabbit hole with only Tufton Street ghouls whispering in their ears.
Unless they change they will fail
The risk is that they drag us all down with them
So, here we’re coming to the crunch, a watershed moment, but who will decide the direction of travel, people, politicians or corporations? The people are mostly uninformed either through sheer ignorance, apathy or right wing media indoctrination.
Politicians are either in the thrall of the billionaire elite, corporations, or other vested interests. And, as agreed elsewhere corporations simply fuel the free market economy regardless of the global climate crisis.
We need all progressive politicians and influencers to align and commence a seismic shift in communicating the breadth and depth of the challenge we face to the masses.
As you all probably know, Scottish Water remains public property. It has its problems, but compared to the disgusting mess in England it is a paragon of virtue. Faced with the threat of privatisation, Strathclyde regional Council held an illegal referendum on the subject. 97% said no. The woman whose name cannot be mentioned backed off, but abolished SRC.
‘who cannot be named”? Sounds a bit fishy
Scottish Water “has its problems”. The Scottish Conservatives love to roast Scottish Water for its failings, particularly on sewage. It is standard knee-jerk Scottish Conservative procedure, but like everything else – you just cant trust them to present the full story. Scottish Conservatives can’t face facts; unless they have strangled and butchered them first. Incidentally, the notably hopeless Scottish Labour MSP, Richard Leonard, when Leader of Scottish Labour, 2017-21 proved his hopeless uselessness, by claiming with a show of spectacular ignorance that Scottish Water should be in public ownership. He was discarded as Leader of Scottish Labour soon after. At least in Scotland there is a difference between conservative and Labour. Conservatives butcher the facts; Labour revel in their ignorance of them. Neither lets the facts ‘get in the way’ of the politics.
Ironically, of course the Scottish Water problem with sewage has a backstory. “Scottish Water inherited a number of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts for sewage plants which are contracted for between 25 and 40 years. These treat around 45 per cent of Scotland’s waste water.” (FFS: Ferret Fact Service). In addition, under the 2005 Scottish Labour Administration in Holyrood passed the Water Services (Scotland) Act, that created a so-called competitive service for business customers. Conservative or Labour they will insinuate neoliberalism into a public service, and turn a public monopoly into a private monopoly, easy profit-making wheeze for somebody; one way or another. You can bank on it, with a too-big-to-fail Bank.
I note that ‘nationalisation of all water’ is the top choice. I presume this means government buying the shares on the market until they control over half of them.
There was no option in the poll for confiscation – representing those who want to not compensate the share holders. Why leave that out? It’s incredibly popular and the purpose of the exercise was to gauge what might be popular.
I think it means require that they put provisions to deliver clean water in their accounts. Then see if they are solvent. If not offer market worth fur an insolvent company.
Sounds good to me Richard. Expose their utter incompetence, destroy their share price then buy them for a song.
Then use QE to put proper investment in to fix the problems.
The railways provided a presedent for nationalisation in all but name. Network Rail is a state controlled not for profit (!) trustee-governed organisation, which was created when its commercial predecessor Railtrack went bust. Railtrack’s debts were subsumed into Network Rail. Those debts where initially underwritten by the government but eventually where recognised on the public sector balance sheet.
Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling and all handful of the stations from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of British Rail, listed on the stock market. Railtrack was a messy story of failed nationalisation of a monopoly service. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack
Twenty years on the train operators are effectively being renationalised one by one ending passenger rail franchising. This is brining further reorganisation to bring track and trains closer together. In May 2021, the Government announced its intent to replace Network Rail in 2023 with a new public body called Great British Railways. That date has already been put back to ‘2024’……a.k.a. after the General Election
Labour Party membership under the right-wing charlatan leadership of Starmer falls by nearly a third from its 2019 high:-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/30/labour-membership-falls-by-23000-over-gaza-and-green-policies
I am amazed it has only fallen by a third.
Nationalise it as in Scotland!!!
But remember, not all water is nationalised in Scotland either.
In my view this is quite simple: Politicking.
Scared to death of showing their hand before the election for fear of the right-wing media ripping into them. As a consequence, none of us know what their plan of action will be, leaving just speculation and irritation, but one things for sure is they will borrow and spend billions because they’ll have to. Once in Downing St with a whopping majority they can crack on with the job in hand….but what a bloody job!!
They will have to protect the finance world because that’s all we’ve had for 40yrs, however as you previous commentators have noted, unless they demonstrate socially responsible use of the (fictitious) public purse, eg the currently privatised public services, they will be ripped open by the electorate….if I know that why wouldn’t the Shadow Cabinet?
Finally, I fear the days of left and right politics maybe in the ’round bin’ as most policies sit in the centre ground because of capitalism and our specific reliance on the world of finance, so until ‘we’ come clean about the deficit mythology to the UK electorate, we will continue to trundle on with a 50% potential economy……..but I could be wrong!!
David Byrne says.
Rentier capitalism is endemic in the UK. It is all around us extracting hard earned wages and salaries in a manner which is truly exploitative-neoliberalism in action.
The UK water industry, for example, will be a battleground in the power struggle between the government and global finance.
If we as a country declare war on rentier capitalism, can we win? Whatever the outcome, we will need strong government and international allies.
The choice is sink or swim, but not in our polluted, disease-ridden waters.
Agreed
What ever happened to the idea the Labour Party should encapsulate both soul and brains? Sadly, the country has ended up with the Non-Starter Starmer Party and so called progressive mainstream media journalists desperately trying to sell us the idea Starmer and his chums are the next best thing since sliced bread:-
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/31/rachel-reeves-the-chess-player-has-an-eye-on-the-economic-endgame
Has anyone noticed that Angela Rayner’s house/tax issue is on at least 1 if not several front pages every day? Starmer cannot get rid of her as she was elected by the members as deputy leader, so MSM is helping him out by trying to force her to resign.
Agreed
Cyndy the whole of Scotland, regardless of political allegiance, noticed it and shrugged its shoulders: the tactics being deployed against Angela Rayner are deployed in a daily pile-on by the MSM against SNP policies and politicians, no matter how trivial the subject matter. Allegations are presented without any relevant evidence i.e. assertions, not facts. In Scotland even the supposedly impartial BBC is part of the pile-on with daily assertions of the inadequacies/incompetence/scandalous behaviour of the Scottish Government. The upshot is that the MSM is no longer trusted here and press circulations and viewer/listener statistics have plummeted to or beyond the point where they are financially viable.
Why no ‘tougher regulation’ option Richard? Some mixture of (1) No dividends till foul water release ends/is greatly reduced (2) Executive pay capped at, say, four times average salary (3) No executive bonuses till foul water release ends/is greatly reduced. You may have better ideas for regulation.
These things will not change much
Insolvency makes change possible
And my accounting proposal reflects the economic reality they face, providing an appropriate basis for asset valuation.