I allowed  endless criticisms of the Conservative government when in power, and in the early stages post election. I then made clear that this site is mainly designed to discuss government policy and actions, not Opposition parties. I write an occasional piece about the opposition  when topical. I did not write or allow continuous criticism of the Labour Opposition 2010-23, and deleted comments personalising attacks on Labour figures. I have published several  of you who remain critical of the Conservatives so we know what you think. There is no need to keep repeating.

If you want to pursue old criticisms of the last Conservative government you should send them to an official Conservative website. You should remember the new leadership has made big changes to migration, net zero and international law policies amongst others.

The Clacton by election was an ideal opportunity for the Rejoin EU party. The main pro EU parties, Lib Dem, Greens and Labour had stood aside. The former MP incumbent  candidate was Nigel Farage with a lifetime of being anti EU. Surely this would show that even in relatively Eurosceptic Essex there was a serious minority of support for rejoining the EU, which could then sustain the often quoted argument of the pro EU forces that a majority of the UK would now like to be back in.

Instead the Rejoin EU party polled under 1.5% of the vote. Their candidate  John Stevens, an experienced politician and a former MEP, failed to get any cut through with the electors and as a result was ignored by the media. The media rightly worked out the only challenger to Mr Farage likely to get  serious support  was Count Binface, who as a result dominated the non Farage coverage. This demonstrates that the alleged wish of many to see the UK back in the EU is not true. If it cannot convert to being  the leading minority vote in a relatively Eurosceptic part of the country, it cannot be the view of anything like a majority of the UK electorate. Those who wanted back into the EU had nothing to lose by voting for Mr  Stevens, as the by election was never going to change the government or make any significant difference to the Commons. A strong vote for Mr Stevens would however have sent a message and would have been greatly used by those who do want us to surrender more powers and align with more EU government.

That is why those of us who think EU Re set and closer alignment will bring us less growth, higher taxes and more bad laws need to remind people that even in the free vote conditions of this bizarre by election the pro EU party got little over 1%, whilst the winner who wants us to stay out got 62.8%. Count Binface campaigned on being in Clacton more than Mr Farage and in favour of cheap ice creams. He promised to build one subsidised home and offered to cut any individual voter’s tax whilst putting it up for the rest. This was preferred by those who did like Mr Farage to the serious – and wrong – proposal that we should re set our relationship with the EU and seek membership put forward by Mr Stevens. Doesn’t that say it all?

A day after a meeting to deal with the water shortage and other issues from the hot weather, Mr Burnham condemns the idea that water companies in the worst drought affected areas should be allowed a small further increase in prices to cover the costs over the next few years of providing more water and water treatment capacity. He seems blissfully unaware that the Regulator has kept investment spending down over recent years to try to keep bills down, at the cost of the companies not being allowed to put in the extra capacity we obviously need.  He also seems to be unable to grasp as PM that if we are to provide adequate supplies and capacity we either have to pay for that through our water bills, or the government will have to pay for it and send us bigger tax bills. The last thing we want, I would have thought, is the kind of design and construction delays and cost escalations that HS 2, our fully nationalised railway, has cursed us with when it comes to a needed programme of new reservoirs and treatment works.

Mr Burnham is right in thinking many people dislike the water companies, feeling let down by sewage in our rivers and now by the threat of water rationing during a drought. He is wrong to think nationalising would correct this. First, the nationalised industry in 1976 with similar weather was worse, with standpipe water only for some regions with no tap water in the home. It presided over  permanently dirty rivers and seas with dumping raw sewage as a matter of policy. Second, if he did want a nationalised solution the costs of taking over the water companies would be huge, as UK shareholders, charities and pension funds that own some of them would not take kindly to theft. Once nationalised the whole extensive investment programmes they are already doing, and the extra investment needed, would be another colossal bill for taxpayers.  The mistake with water privatisation was leaving the monopoly in place which so disfigured the nationalised regional concerns. I have set out before how water competition would unleash more capacity, innovation and new technology to resolve the shortages and dirty water.

My water bill is a small fraction of my Council Tax Bill. It presents good value for the water I use. The Lib Dem led Council wastes and loses a fortune on bad projects and bad management. It regularly puts the bill up by more than inflation. It spends a lot of money on consulting us, only to do the opposite of what we recommend in many cases. Mr Burnham should understand it is rip off government that is doing far more harm to  most domestic budgets. He should also grasp the bad role played by the Water  Regulator in getting us into a position where we have not put enough new capacity in to cater for the millions of extra people  we have welcomed into our country this century.

The tabloid headline of my youth at the top of this article  used to  be rolled out when we had hot days. We used Fahrenheit then, a more sensitive and large scale way of judging the temperature. We all knew during summer that 70 degrees was pleasant day, 80 was a warm day and 90 was a hot day. As temperatures sometimes soared into the high 90s that was a too hot day. Nonetheless those with money opted to go to the south of Europe in search of the 100 degree fix for a holiday , equipped with sun tan lotion and often then a passion to lie out in the very hot sun. Today we call  those temperatures  21.2 Celsius, 26.67, 32.22 and 37.77 which are more  difficult to remember and not so clear in the message they send. Maybe we need to unite around 20,25,30 and 35 as benchmarks of how

Interesting that the government has at last spotted we are having some hot days. Curious that they chose now to make this an emergency issue to warrant a meeting of their COBRA Committee. That is meant to meet as soon as a new disaster hits, not weeks after a problem has emerged.

You would have thought the priority meeting should have been how to stop the new mega dinghies, the jumbo inflatables now hitting the Channel. That surely is an emergency, given the large numbers of lives at risk, the passivity of the French and the need to stop the flow. There is new evidence that we are now facing much larger boats who stop to pick up hundreds of people along the French coast before they come to English waters.

What should the “Summer days” Cobra do? Government does need to respond to the possible water shortage and has been meeting to try to do so, and to the stresses on our electricity and rail systems. Here is a short agenda:

1. Stop many  categories of new migrants like those seeking low skilled jobs coming by legal routes to the UK. We do not have enough water, power, NHS capacity for our current population, so why keep increasing numbers?
2. Press ahead with the 9 new reservoirs that are being considered. The government should drive through the licences and planning permissions rapidly to ward off future water shortages and to catch up with all the extra people invited in in recent years with no new reservoirs being built.
3. Tell the owners to get the Beckton desalination plant working and use it to reduce draw down from reservoirs for London supply

When Mr Burnham says he understands people do not want the early release of two criminals serving time for their part in the death of a policeman he seeks to be popular. That’s no bad thing in a leader  to pick up the public mood about an issue, and if it is well based as this is, to support it. What is wrong is to do so without a clue about what he can do about it as PM.

We have seen him dither and delay. The Justice Department presumably under the supervision or surveillance of the Justice Secretary had determined they needed to undertake early release of a large number of prisoners. They have  been closing so many old prisons so they had almost entirely eliminated any gains from  the 14,000 new prison places Conservative Ministers had got them to undertake. Under the Starmer government too, as 3000 new prison places from the Conservative plan became available other places were shut, cancelling the wins. The PM allowed this policy to go forward. The policy  entailed the early release of the two connected to PC Harper’s murder and some in the grooming gangs.

When the PM got round to understanding how unpopular the Justice Department policy was  he asked for a rethink. On August 4th a new policy was announced, saying that the early releases would not now include rape, serious child sex and grooming offences. This did deal with some of the  public anger over grooming gangs but the public was still unhappy. Those who assisted the murder of PC Harper were still eligible for release. So Mr Burnham gave up defending this second improved policy and asked for another rethink. At last yesterday the PM has called for his Justice Secretary to present a new policy to Parliament in early September to free the necessary places without early release of categories of dangerous and nasty criminals the public want locked up for longer.

Why? Surely any person who becomes PM should know that before you blunder into a public policy statement you sit down with colleagues and the Head of the relevant Department and hammer it out. You look at the bad aspects and you require a better answer if the policy fails to achieve your aims. Instead we have a PM so in love with his own work on social media that he says what he thinks the public want to hear without engaging government or making sure he can deliver.

Why did the Justice Secretary behave like this? Is he not in charge of his Department? Can’t he get the Department to do what he or the PM wants? Does he accept two public changes of his policy by the PM and the obvious implication that the PM thinks he has let him and the public down, and has failed to do the homework to sort out prison places. If a PM has to get a colleague to try harder it should be done in private, not in public. From the Justice Secretary’s point of view it must be a nightmare working for Mr Burnham if every time he agrees a government policy he then goes back on his agreement and asks for a rethink.

Yesterday evening I was asked to join a discussion about net zero policies on LBC. The person putting the net zero view wished to mount a personal  attack on me on false grounds rather than dealing with the realities of the damaging policies he and Mayor Kahn are proposing to Mr Burnham. He seemed surprised by my line of argument and unable to cope with it.

In the short time I was given I tried  to summarise my long advanced case that the main UK net zero policies are self harming  and self defeating. I pointed out that most of them lead to more world CO 2, most notably the crazy decision to keep our gas in the ground, replacing it with imported LNG. This generates three to four tines as much CO 2 as using our own piped gas. This came as a shock to my LBC counterpart who then tried to deny the obvious.

I did not have time to point out if I bought a battery car large quantities of CO 2 would be generated abroad in its manufacture to  mine the battery materials and make the battery. More importantly when I plugged it in to recharge most  likely  they would need to burn more gas in a gas power station to meet my extra demand. How does that help? It would be more efficient to burn the fossil fuel directly in the vehicle.

I did point out in the ten years from the Paris climate Treaty there has been a big increase in world CO 2 led by China, India, USA, Russia and Brazil. There is no sign of that trend changing. The UK inflicting self harm  and choosing a self defeating policy makes things worse all round. Why won’t they listen? How many more times do we need to explain the obvious?

The government is letting the train operating companies take the hit for delays  and cancellations which were rife on the network over the last two days.  They have to handle the passengers, try to find alternatives for them, and pay them compensation.

This was yet another case when the blame rests elsewhere. Their  trains were working, their crews had turned up. The trains were held up by all signal lights going to red owing to signal failure. Signals and the power for them are firmly under the control of long nationalised Network Rail.

Network Rail can say  the  immediate cause was a ninety second power cut by the electricity supplier. They are meant to be able to handle that with stand by emergency power. That apparently failed.

I heard a nationalised rail apologist on the radio blame inadequate funding and staffing of Network Rail for the chaos. Network Rail was set up under a previous Labour government and has  enjoyed two years of more generous Labour settlements  under this government. Surely something as crucial as back up power for signals,  central to safe running, should have been an affordable priority?

The nationalised railway needs to get more  used to power cuts.With more  renewables on the grid there will be more supply interruptions. Spain was a warning where general power cuts closed down the trains and took out the traffic lights, causing road chaos as well. Travellers do not want to spend hours in a stopped train, which could be even worse in a tunnel.If nationalisation is so wonderful why can’t it run a signalling system to keep the trains running?