Nationalising water polls well. That just tells us the public is fed up with sewage discharges into our rivers, rationing when we want to water our gardens, and the recent large rises in our bills. I am as critical as any of the poor performance of some companies, the failure to spend enough on new and bigger pipes, more treatment works and more reservoirs.
I part company from the public mood over the proposed solution. I remember the nationalised water industry before 1989. It gave us the name “ the dirty man of Europe” as EU rules and monitoring revealed just how much sewage discharged to rivers and to our beaches. The industry was regularly blocked from putting in new capacity and new reservoirs as every pound they spent counted as public spending which a hard pressed Treasury and over taxed voters could not afford. In the heat of 1976 some parts of the country had their mains water turned off because of a shortage, People had to queue in the street to fill a bucket from a standpipe.
Three things went wrong with privatisation. The government refused to allow competition on the specious argument that it is a natural monopoly as you only have one pipe into the home. We only have one gas pipe and one telecoms cable into the house, but that did not stop competition. Without competition the industry has lacked innovation and more pressure to keep down prices.
The Regulator decided to stop companies spending more on expanding capacity and replacing pipes in order to keep prices down. This in turn prevented good companies cleaning up their game and gave bad companies an excuse not to bother.
Successive governments then invited in very large numbers of new residents with proper though of how to provide all the extra pipes, treatment works and reservoirs they would need to have a good water service.
Nationalising will not solve any of these three problems. To solve the dirty and scarce water problems the government needs 1 to stop large net migration. 2. To introduce competition into water services 3. To instruct the Regulator to allow a major further uplift in investment programmes to speed up ending sewage discharge and water shortages .
Nationalising would require a large outlay of money on buying up the companies or on compensation for compulsory purchase. If the government confiscated the assets there would costly lawsuits and many investors would be put of off risking their money in the UK.
July 20, 2026
Yes.. many a true word said here. Living in the South East.. forced onto water meters about 12 years ago and the rates have reently rocketed.. water neutrality issues caused by incessant development driven ultimately by immigration.. useless regulators that appear more favourable to the industry (as in other utilities).. etc.
The monstrous rises however were nodded through by Starmer and Reeves about 12 months ago. If the wider industry is nationalised I assume rates will go down..? I think not..
There is no respite for the weary British householder, most of whom are probably effectively struggling.. It is appalling.
July 20, 2026
The problem for any UK Government is who, in the private sector, would want to buy a failing utility today? No incentives are on the table to attract any proposals and tenders, especially when it’s the socialists who are in Downing Street again. Proper conservatism is now required to get OUR country back on track, but will we have to wait another three years before true beneficial change can really happen?
July 20, 2026
Indeed.
Many investors are already put off investing in the UK by hight taxes, over regulation, vastly expensive energy, high interest rates, slow planning, a vile, misdirected and anti-business government, mad employment laws, tenancy laws… even before government start stealing assets on top of this.
July 20, 2026
Stealing even more of people’s assets I should have said.
July 20, 2026
Goodbye and good riddance to Sir Kier Starmer, doubtless he will go to his grave (after enjoying his vast undeserved pensions with its special act of parliament and 115k PA lifetime allowance) still thinking he did a good job and that he “won” a landslide election. He was gifted the landslide by the ConSocialists Cameron, May, Boris and the dire Sunak. Sunak even gave it to him 6 month early. Doubtless he will end up in the Lords with Mandelson, Blunkett, Kahn, Lord Cameron of Greenslade types.
Does the climate alarmist hypocrite take a helicopter from Highgrove to LONDON today or does he use a many car motorcade and police escort? Which is more energy inefficient I wonder. When Burnham goes will he have to travel up from Manchester too for a change of PM panto?
July 20, 2026
Next general election odd overall majority implied probability.
No overall 62%
Labour 14%
Tories 12%
Reform 11%
So very little chance of a sensible right wing government with real power it seems. Let alone one that would be allowed to actually deliver. All very depressing indeed. No much chance of me living long enough to see a well run country with a working compass.
Looking at the rapid movements in betting odds for the next Chancellor etc. suggest to me insider betting going on as we saw with the election date and Sunak. Did anyone get prosecuted then?
July 20, 2026
I distrust the motives for nationalisation of water. Does the government simply think it can have the profits currently going to shareholders? At best, we would then exchange water waste for financial waste.
July 20, 2026
Growth in every post code and hope in every heart and other such drivel. But Burnham will stick to Labour’s appalling manifesto (except you have delivered vast and damaging increases in NI already hitting average working people very hard and energy cost have gone up hugely.
July 20, 2026
Companies can choose their supplier. Homes should be allowed to also.
July 20, 2026
It might make no sense to nationalise the water industry but when did liebour do anything that made sense.
I see Guyliner is flying a kite for introducing freedom of movement from the EU. Something else that doesn’t make sense but he’ll do it anyway.
July 20, 2026
Thames Water carries a massive debt pile exceeding £16.5 billion within its operating company, plus £1.35 billion at it’s holding company, Kemble. Because the utility’s prior equity shareholders wrote their stakes down to zero in 2024, the company is effectively controlled by its major bondholders and lenders, who are currently negotiating restructuring to avoid government nationalization.
Thames Water’s parent entity, Kemble Water Holdings, is technically owned by a consortium of institutional investors, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds
Their offer to re-finance Thames is dependent on the government absolving them from any further prosecutions and fines for dumping sewage into our rivers and beaches. This is unacceptable. It’s bad for the Thames bondholders, but they have to take a 99% haircut. They can sell their debt on the junk bond market
July 20, 2026
It sets a very bad message to institutional investors and individual investors if after a privatisation of an industry in the UK a different government re-naltionalises but without proper compensation.
“Thay have to take a 99% haircut” you say SG.
Would you be happy and so generous if you had invested a large sum a few years ago?
July 20, 2026
I understood part of the problem was MacQuarrie piled a load of debt onto Thames Water . Didn’t the then Conservative government ban them from government contracts as a result? But Labour allowed them to buy up the gas net work.
July 21, 2026
the regulator has sat and watched that happen over years. its as much a failure of state regulators as anything else.
July 20, 2026
Good morning.
None of the privatised monopolies work. Rail. Energy. Water. Can anyone think why ?
I agree that Nationalisation is not the answer. But I do not think privatisation is either. What about either State ownership and private control or, as I have said recently, make the utility companies Trusts and let the workers be the owners ?
July 20, 2026
MB,
You have to prevent monopolies from price gouging and asset stripping.
Overseas investors don’t care about this country – other than as a profit centre.
You also need to ensure that workers actually work and that there are penalties for those who do not.
The Highways department in my local council are useless. They do not respond to complaints. If you then escalate via local councillors they fob them off with excuses while still not actually doing anything. If their employment were at risk they might work better. There are no penalties for failure for too many.
Competition is not a solution. We know all our regulators are completely useless too.
July 20, 2026
Much work previously done by government employees has been outsourced.
The idea was to reduce costs and provide a better service. That did not work well. Prison services, NHS, pensions management etc etc – often abysmal records. Yet they continue to get work from the government. They are favoured providers. Absolutely no penalty for failure.
Government needs to get tough with these people. It will not happen because the firms ‘look after’ the politicians who call the shots. etc ed
July 20, 2026
Where businesses are state owned they can just rig the market with subsidies, taxes, soft loans, unfair regulation as they do with trains, buses, schools, healthcare, universities, banks… this creating usually dire state monopolies or near monopolies. They have you cash already so it is Hobson’s choice for most just shut up and get in the queue mate.
July 20, 2026
The Trust idea is interesting. But if it’s aything like the John Lewis model (I worked there for a while), it’s not good for the lowly worker sorry, “partner”). Greedy types with lousy management skills rise to the top through sharp elbows and friemds in the right places, to make a pig’s ear of running the business.
July 20, 2026
State ownership – isn’t that nationalisation?
The water companies should have been mutualised rather than privatised. Shares go to the customers, who surrender them when they move out of the area and newcomers get them automatically. Employees could have a share as well.
Short of that, a good regulator is the answer, with proper powers to dictate how water companies spend their money. They can make a profit and pay interest on loans, but only if their statutory obligations in providing a service at a controlled price is met.
They could start by stipulating that fines take the form of shares in the company that are given to a customer trust. Southern Water has been given a fine of £7m recently, but it doesn’t compensate customers.
July 20, 2026
I agree Mark B. John is fully into promoting privatisation and competition.Competition is more open to cut corners and making a profit.
If you look at our local GP service ,The private company isn’t on the list of satisfied patients at all, neither are the NHS run services which have many practices in one building.The best performers are the small GP services paid by the NHS to manage.In fact the standards are set in these practices by caring about the patient and not the profit and doing reparative procedures and investigations immediately, without always appealing to secondary care ,which in my area I will say are usually very good.
July 20, 2026
The privatised utilities were sold with the Government holding a Golden Share, this stopped the companies falling into the hands of the rip off merchants. Major and Brown removed the Golden Shares, it was deemed to be contrary to EU competition rules. If memory serves , pretty much immediately after that the companies got flogged off to US , then churned to European interests before being the targets of private equity , who loaded on the debt.
July 20, 2026
Mr tice of the reform party wants all the assets of Thames water confiscated from shareholders and creditors for £1. This is also likely to be a popular policy, but not a sensible one.
July 20, 2026
Is that his considered opinion, or just a throw away comment he made once?
There’s no need to take the assets, just regulate how they are used.
July 20, 2026
Kent has been possibly the hardest hit when it comes to failure by the water companies. Loss of supply is alarmingly regular. Hosepipe bans have become normalised.
So where have succesive governments decided to build massive amounts of houses to home the incomers. Why Kent of course!
July 20, 2026
Well the government wanted to keep it as a monopoly to increase its value on sell off. That led, as you say, to the new owners having a guaranteed income stream against which they could borrow heavily against assets to pay dividends. That in turn led to the operation going towards insolvency.
What was actually needed was the sale at the outset making less money, but to sell with the proviso that a regulator had the power to take the assets back and resell them, denying the possibility to borrow against them. A golden share kept would have done that.
July 20, 2026
‘We cannot afford more nationalisation’… of course we can, as a Socialist State the ‘Minions’ will just have to work harder and hand over more money, its not their money it belongs to their rulers.
July 20, 2026
Clearly the general public don’t understand everything about nationalisation!
Certainly we need better, innovative management of our utilities to bring them up to a good service, but the state taking them over is never a good solution simply because of the costs involved and future inability to fund them properly. Just look at how many £millions HMG is wasting on steel production, and see that as an example for other industries.
You can bet that this new labour government will make all the wrong decisions when it comes to supporting failing industries.
Before we get too excited at a new face in #10, let’s remember that after nine years in office, Burnham is leaving the Greater Manchester Combined Authority with £1.34 billion of debt and the mayoral council tax precept up by 127 per cent.
July 20, 2026
Sometime it seems that we concentrate too much on local issues – why do we get so distracted when nothing is being reported of other things that matter a great deal.
The UN is always hatching more woke schemes and HMG just lets them. As it stands, the UN is already deeply hostile to our values.
Can you imagine if radical feminist and neo-Communist Michelle Bachelet who has spent every day of her career building the very machine that attacks our values takes total control of the United Nations.
If elected, she plans to use the UN to push abortion into the UK’s laws, gender ideology into your children’s schools, speech controls to silence voices, and Agenda 2030 into the decisions our elected officials are supposed to make for themselves.
And scariest of all … the UN’s globalist bureaucrats are desperate to hand her the keys.
July 20, 2026
+1
July 20, 2026
According to Professor Gloria Moss, writing in UK Column, her research into the Fabian’s Society, shows that in the 1964 Labour Manifesto, it was stated, “For us, world government is the final objective – and the United Nations is the chosen instrument.”
Perhaps that’s why the UN is pushing ideologies onto us, and the Labour Party which comprises a largish number of Fabian members are happy for them. It’s another step in their march to their end goal.
The article is entitled The Secret Society Dedicated to a New World Order: the Fabians.
July 20, 2026
The delivery ‘the one pipe in and out’ will always be a political situation, no easy answers other than someone in Parliament demonstrating how to manage. The supplier for those pipes(water in, sewerage out) however is a different ball game, free and open competition should be the only criteria.
The Natural Monopoly can be reduced with fixed term contracts. Look at Local Refuge collection were Councils use Contractors, in fear of losing those contracts they are made to work. Those with the Councils hands on fail.
The big problem is our lazy UK Parliament and its Government. They lean towards big monolithic answers to local situations, situations that require different answers not the same answer. After all the State, the Establishment, is big and clunky and doesn’t work so lets impose that on everyone – leveling down anyone? The attitude is we are the State, the Parliament with never had real job MPs, all with the attitude that with our ineptitude, we know best on how to run ‘international scale profitably enterprises’ better than anyone else.
Thames Water is the standout it is so big and vast trying to be all things to all people and failing due to lousy management – there is no logic or basis for it ever to have been handed to one single equity funding operator. It doesn’t need nationalising it needs breaking up.
You can relate the general situation to NutZero were all the same dumb principles of State ownership are enforced, but under a different title. Energy is supposed to be bought on an open market, then along comes the Government’s Ofgen that define the tariffs. What a surprise, suppliers sell at the maximum they are permitted too – that’s called competition. It is Parliament, the UK’s Socialist Parliament that is killing the market and enforcing prices that are 400% higher then those that are UK’s competitors.
Might seem off topic but look at our university fees. Some Universities are good some are rubbish, some courses have value others not so much, yet they all get to charge the same fee as defined essentially by the State. This pattern of State knows best is everywhere, everywhere that is failing and Parliament, and it is ‘Parliament’s’ answer is lets create more failures, lets get intertwined and create more failure – tax will be the answer? If we keep doing the same thing and keep getting the same answer how is that wrong.
And the World? The UK’s Competitor World marches on creating wealth, moving forward and funding a better life for all. That’s the mentality that is wrong in the UK Parliament and in contradiction in a Great Big competitive World, they look inward and think they are the answer without understanding of knowing the question. They seek World isolation as an answer to their local Socialist quest
July 20, 2026
Why do we need to nationalise water ?
Let the companies unable raise funds file for bankrupcy and thus neutralise their ddebt.
Nobody should shed a tear for those that lose their shirts, even if some of them are foreign pension funds.
Have the regulator vet potential buyers and only allow buyers who have a credible plan and sufficient funding to acquire a water company.
They should then be tightly controlled so that we don’t see a repeat of the way things went before.
Alternatively, Labour could match the highest bid and take control without having to find many billions to rescue those that brought the companies to their knees.
July 20, 2026
Being ‘too big to fail’ was why the banksters were bailed out, yet natural justice should cause those who fail to lose what they have handled so recklessly.
Perhaps smaller units would operate better. Then loss would be less severe, unless they were all idiots and spoiled the whole industry.
July 20, 2026
The company that runs the service could be separate from the one that owns the assets. The service operator would be responsible for maintaining the assets as well as paying water employees etc. The credit holders might wish to make the asset owner insolvent, but in taking charge of the assets they find themselves accountable to the regulator in how they can be used.
No need for Labour to match any bids.
July 20, 2026
Should any of the existing firms go bankrupt I could see OFWAT receiving a bunch of lawsuits arguing that their restrictive behaviour caused the failure.
July 20, 2026
And the home pension funds?
July 20, 2026
Because of the nature of man with all his failings unrestricted competition in retail and all industries brings only cartels and price fixing – so why do you think they are out on the golf courses on Wednesday afternoons? Then to counter this and with water in mind we need heavier regulation but also the goldrn share approach might go a long way to putting manners on them – whether privatised or nationalised?
July 20, 2026
“People of the same trade seldom meet together… but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” (The Wealth of Nations).
Often nowadays it seems the regulators are in on it too.
July 20, 2026
Who is going to own the golden share of a nationalised company?
July 20, 2026
I think politicians worry about the same things time and time again, and never stand back and look at reality.
Whether an organisation is publicly owned and run, or privately owned and run, is not the only determinant of how good that organisation will be.
Good outcomes depend on good staff, some cap on the more extreme crap senior management, proper scope for innovation, proper feedback loops between end consumers and change in the business, proper incentives for proper success, and so on.
There are plenty of crap private sector organisations, the only thing that keeps them on their toes is the ability of customers to take their business elsewhere. And even that is limited as nowadays often the state bails them out (eg the banks), or is their dominant customer and so introduces massive Chinese whispers to the real end customers.
All the focus on this diverts attention from the real reasons the large organisations in the UK both public and private are so rubbish at the moment. Things that have been socially engineered by our ruling classes.
Things like the way outsourcing works, the way that immigrant labour works, the way moving workloads abroad is done, the way intellectual property is allowed to leak, the way promotion and “getting on” mostly depends on playing politics, contacts, prejudice, and not real merit, the way the tax/benefits/regulations system incentivises completely the wrong behaviours.
July 20, 2026
Quite right. Nationalisation is not the answer, but let’s not forget the water companies were privatised with no debt.
The appalling debts of Thames Water are a disgrace. But the three points in your last but one paragraph are the solution. Our MPs for the last 30 years have had no vision, with a few exceptions. Why can’t they see that if you allow unlimited immigration, you need to build extra reservoirs, Houses, Hospitals, Schools, and GP surgeries?
But no planning or preparation for the last 30 years. No wonder people are fed up.
July 20, 2026
“The government refused to allow competition on the specious argument that it is a natural monopoly as you only have one pipe into the home. We only have one gas pipe and one telecoms cable into the house, but that did not stop competition.”
The reason I believe why it is possible to have privatisation/competition for electricity, telecoms and even gas is because there exists a national grid for each of these services. There is no national grid for water supply because moving around a dense liquid is extremely expensive. Even in the case of electricity the Net Zero 2050 plan, which requires moving electricity from the North Sea and around the country is, according to latest estimates, likely to cost £1 trillion to upgrade the national grid and this is without upgrading all the local grids which currently can only handle 1-2KW/household continuously, costing another £1 trillion. If moving water were not so expensive you would expect there to be a plan to build a pipeline from Scotland/ Northern Ireland to central and southern England to solve the water shortages in the south of the UK. BTW, the cost of distribution is also why there will never be a hydrogen grid like the existing methane grid. However, I can see that it may be possible to privatise and generate competition in the sewage side of the water business where there is the potential for new and cheaper processes for water treatment. I do, however, agree with the other two points. We need to stop mass immigration. And the regulators start to need to do their job properly, but like many quangos they have succumbed to Robert Conquest’s 2nd and 3rd laws of politics.
Reply Water regions with pipe systems are quite large. There are some cross regional pipes as with use of Welsh water in Midlands and could be more.
July 20, 2026
Excessive population is the fundamental problem. Taking no action to remedy that and trying all sorts of other remedies is folly. Eventually fresh water won’t be available and only waste the colour of beer will exist to quench thirst.
July 20, 2026
A Media view – ‘A Government-led takeover of Thames would be tantamount to declaring war on some of Wall Street’s most fearless vulture funds – many of whom treat litigation as a core part of their financial strategies.’
The UK Parliament, and it is the UK Parliament as it is the majority that support the idea that World isolation for the UK will support their personal insular Socialist ideology.
The Establishment needs tearing down, real democracy installed. Where people chose their candidates, fund their campaigns and install those that will work with them. Even the concept of Political Parties is bankrupt, we don’t need their them and us ideology. We need the most capable amongst to be allowed to step up, serve and work with us. People need to be released to reach potential, that is not by being dictated too by personal political ideology but working together. This Gang leader ‘knows best’ nonsense has to stop the time for Norman Baronial rule with surfs as slaves is past. More than 1,000 years have past and the UK Parliament is still of that mindset.
July 20, 2026
Nationalisation without compensation smacks of the behaviour of a third world kleptocracy.
This is the state to which our politicians have sunk.
July 20, 2026
Are we going to close the circle with another Healey going cap in hand to the IMF?
July 20, 2026
Average water consumption 150 litres of water per day per person . 10 million people added to our population via immigration, which all adds up to additional demand of 1.5 billion litres of water per day.
Did any of the geniuses in the British establishment stop that think when they were shipping immigrants in by the million , if we had enough resources to sustain them. Perhaps their English , Classics, or PPE courses in Oxford and Cambridge cover didn’t cover such practicalities.