Dry Rot

Drought in Wales and the West Country? That sounds like the premise for a stand-up comedy routine. It is no wonder that next to no one would fight for this country anymore. Water privatisation has indisputably failed, and the shares in the companies are monetarily worthless (what would you pay for them?), so bring on lock, stock and barrel renationalisation, leading to the National Grid that was promised by Labour in 1979. Just do it. Now. The Parliament of the United Kingdom may legislate over and above any devolved body, and the people of Scotland and Wales would love this arrangement once they had it. Nothing has weakened the Union, and democratic national and parliamentary sovereignty, more than privatisation. While there are grey areas, if something would obviously have to be rescued by the State rather than allowed to go bust, then it belongs in public ownership, just as if something obviously would not, then it does not. Corner shops? Obviously not. But water? Obviously.

The wars in Ukraine and with Iran mean that there will be little relief from the cost of living crisis for the foreseeable future, and Andy Burnham is keeping Britain a vigorous participant in both, since the money can always be found for the arms companies, just as we recently saw that an in-the-club Prime Minister could just spaff £10 billion up the wall by giving that much public money to his mates in return for absolutely nothing. We trade unionists might have defended Angela Rayner’s retention of her severance pay on the grounds that she had done the job for 15 months, so that she was being paid off with only a little more than a thousand pounds per month, and she had had no expectation of reappointment. But now she has ruled out rent controls. Like any serious action on social care, or on public transport, or on rough sleeping, any serious action on housing would call for stronger and more active central government, not for further devolution to the Conservative and Reform UK figures who were at Burnham’s table in Manchester. Still, that was a very clever image. Those are their parties’ politicians who make real decisions. Kemi or Nigel who?