CROYDON COMMENTARY: Households in the south of the borough are about to see their water supplier taken over by the same firm responsible for providing contaminated drinking water in Devon. What can they do about it? PETER UNDERWOOD, right, a candidate in the upcoming General Election, suggests that they exercise a real choice at the ballot box
Privatisation has been an absolute disaster.
Our public services are natural monopolies – that is, they are most efficient when they are run by just one company. We don’t get to pick which rail or bus company we travel with on our journey and we don’t get to choose who provides the water in our taps, but we do all end up paying more for a poorer service while private owners make a fortune.
Bottling it: South West Water, coming to a pipeline near you, soon
Since privatisation in 1989, the water companies are estimated to have given £78billion to their shareholders in dividends. At the same time, they have built up £64billion in debt and haven’t invested in providing the sewerage service we need because it is “not cost beneficial” to them.
The failure to regulate the private companies properly has led to them dumping sewage into our rivers and on to our beaches, because that’s more profitable for them than upgrading the sewage treatment and disposal system.
There has been a recent scandal of people in Devon being poisoned by sewage bugs in their drinking water.
Now the company that owns South West Water, the one supplying the sewage bugs in Devon, has just been given permission to take over Sutton and East Surrey Water, the monopoly water suppliers to thousands of households in the south of Croydon and Sutton.
We didn’t get any choice in who took over our water supply but we do have a choice about what happens next. The Green Party is the only major party in Croydon and Sutton who are proposing to bring public services back into public hands. So if that’s what you want then make the most of your choice when you come to vote at the General Election on July 4.
People have seen through the scam of the old political duopoly
One of the main arguments used back in the 1980s and 1990s for privatising our public services was that we needed “more choice”. If we had more choice, everything would be so much better, we were told.
The argument for breaking up public services was that if we had the choice between, say, five companies, the competition between them would force them all to improve their offer so we would all end up with a better service.
Dishonest campaigning: the London Mayoral election wqas never close at all. Khan knew that
I’ve always wondered why the same argument isn’t used for the choice between political parties. If more choice is good, why do the two largest parties insist on keeping an election system that was designed to limit choices to only two options?
Why do we constantly hear Labour and Conservatives saying that elections will just be between them, and that voting for anything else is a “wasted vote”? Why do we have so-called “tactical voting” guides that tell people the only way to get one of the big parties out is to vote for the other one?
The answer comes in two parts.
The first is that keeping the whole system stitched up between Labour and Conservative just makes life easier for both of them. As we saw at the recent London elections, the Conservatives’ main message was that voting for them was the only way to get Sadiq Khan out. Labour’s main message was that you had to vote for Sadiq Khan to keep Susan Hall out.
Sadiq Khan even put out false claims that the election was going to be close, to try to con even more people into just voting for him or Susan Hall.
Neither of those parties made any real effort to set out a plan for making life better in London. The Tory and Labour candidates didn’t even bother to turn up to most of the debates where they could be questioned on their policies. Convincing you that you have no choice is easier for them than trying to convince you that they have the best policies.
The second reason why Labour and Conservatives are fighting so hard to tell you that they are the only choice is because more and more of you have seen through their scam and are choosing to vote for someone else.
In the constituency ballot for Croydon and Sutton at the London elections, where I was the Green Party’s candidate, the vote for both Labour and Conservatives overall went down. That overall figure conceals more significant differences at a more local level.
We used to get a detailed breakdown of the vote so we could see how people voted in each council ward. That wasn’t done this year, but one of the advantages of being at the count is that you can still get a fair idea of how people have voted in each area.
Under pressure: the London elections suggest that Labour may struggle to unseat Tory MP Chris Philp
In Sutton, it appeared that the Conservative vote stayed about the same. This was where the Liberal Democrats made most of their gains. This could make it quite interesting in the upcoming General Election in both Sutton contests and the question of what happens to the Reform vote (who also made significant gains in Sutton) could decide the outcome.
In Croydon South, the only real Labour v Conservative contest locally, the votes at the London elections appeared to back that up, but the question remains whether Labour can do enough to overtake the Conservative majority in this seat.
In Croydon West, the Labour vote only seemed to drop slightly but the Conservative vote looks like it dropped considerably. The rise in the Green vote means they may have already overtaken the Conservatives and moved into second place. The same may also be true in the new seat of Streatham and Croydon North as well.
In Croydon East, the Labour vote didn’t change much but it looked like the Conservative vote saw big falls in traditionally strong areas like Selsdon, but also gains in New Addington. The Greens look to have picked up votes from the other parties and narrowed the gap between them and both Labour and the Conservatives. There was also a rise in the Reform vote here, and it remains to be seen what happens to that when we come to the General Election.
So it appears that when it comes to politics, despite the best efforts of the two biggest parties, voters are starting to use their choice and choosing other parties.
- Peter Underwood is the Green Party’s candidate for Croydon East in the General Election on July 4
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Given the state of the Labour and Conservative parties many, including me, will be thinking of voting Green. But can you reassure us that your party’s recent, apparant, lurch to extremism on trans issues and more isn’t deliberate policy? I’ve not mentioned the disaster that was Brighton … or Leeds
“The Green Party is the only major party in Croydon and Sutton who are proposing to bring public services back into public hands. ”
I find Peter one of the more considered commentators to this esteemed organ, yet also find it quite touching the way he always exalts the public sector, and, seemingly, quite without irony; while writing within the bounds of one of the most mis-managed public sector organisations of our day – Croydon LBC.
Similarly, he does it in a week when it is revealed that the NHS killed – at best, recklessly; at worst, corporately murdered – thousands of people with infected blood.
In a week when NHS managers were revealed to vexatiously and mendaciously crush the careers of whistleblowers.
In a week when the CEO of the Post Office (a 100% Government-owned organisation) wept over the her role in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice ever.
Every week, updates from the Housing Ombudsman come across my desk featuring dozens and dozens of instances of “severe maladministration” by social housing providers (RSLs, HAs, LAs).
Instances of poor management, incompetency, malfeasance and worse in the public sector are legion (Mid-Staffs, Bristol Royal Infirmary, MoD procurement, 2007 foot and mouth lab leak etc etc et-bloody-cetera) and it is not simply a question of funding nor ownership.
Unless the Greens happen to suscribe to the School of Progressive Exceptionalism, the motto of which is: Our Actions are Excused Because Our Motives are Pure.
As it happens, I actually agree that critical infrastructure – water, power generation, rail (track at least), semi-conductor manufacture, essential materials (e.g. lithium, where we can find it) and so on – best sit within the realm of Government.
But it is a huge leap to say the Government (central or local) is best placed to manage or conduct operations in these sectors. It hasn’t pulled that off much yet, and to think otherwise is, again, quite touching in its way.
And it is obvious that better motivation and expertise exists outside Government and needs to be corralled efficiently and (cost) effectively.
Unfortunately, another area in which the public sector has proven itself to be shockingly hopeless is in contract broking/ placement, leasing, sub-contracting and outsourcing generally. It bungles it or gets mugged, nearly every time.
So until the Civil Service and Local Governments develop a shit-hot buying model and recruit some shit-hot contract lawyers, negotiators and buyers (from experience, I’d start headhunting people from B&Q and Tesco) – turns some poachers into gamekeepers – putting “public services back into public hands” is absolutely no flaming guarantee of anything.
To paraphrase what was said of Charles I when he lost the English Civil War, ‘he knew not there was more to it than willing it be done’.