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Depressing that he ran such a bigoted campaign and did so well
Identity politics isn't it, that and a self destruct mission by the left to get rid of KS
Yes Labour still can't figure out how to be electable - and the reasons for that are obvious on every political thread on here - but the Tories must be a bit disappointed this morning.
The swing was 2.9% from Labour to Conservative.
Not a great psephologist then. There was no swing to the Conservatives.
How so, this went from a safe Labour seat to a scraping through by the skin of their teeth Labour seat?
But yes, everything is fine now
Commenting on the result, a senior Labour source said:
Everyone’s been calling this a referendum on Keir’s leadership.
Well we’ve won – bucked the trend, held on to this marginal seat and advanced in Tory areas. A fantastic result.
😆
How so
A swing requires one party to increase its share of the vote. The only ‘swing’ here was from Labour to Galloway’s little band of shysters. That’s depressing, but the real story here.
everything is fine now
I’ll be surprised if a single person contributes to this thread today suggesting “everything is fine now”.
If Labour drop seven points and Cons drop 1.6 points, then how have Cons not increased their share of the vote compared to Labour?
I'm sure you know better than someone who does this for a living though. 😛
I’ll be surprised if a single person contributes to this thread today suggesting “everything is fine now”.
I was talking about the attitude of the person quoted, seems wildly optimistic to me. 'we just lost two by elections but this one where we scraped by is the only one that counts'
Hard to draw conclusions from this seat, but everyone will draw the conclusions they want regardless
Loads of confounding factors:
Seat was always Tory, until blair
Brabin leaving created Labour resentment
Sister of Jo Cox
Hancock scandal
Starmer unpopularity, especially with taken for granted Muslim vote
Vaccine bounce
Restrictions lifting/not
Galloway - took 8000 votes! -
Extrapolating that into national picture isn't easy
Starmer has the summer to shape up & a few years yet before a GE (I still see 0 benefit to Johnson risking an 80 seat majority with a GE)
Everyone will claim it as their victory. But it does show Johnson not to be infallible, the Hancock story won't go away and Starmzy can relax (a bit). With furlough ending, evictions back on the agenda, 1% for hospital workers, uptick in the Delta variant, chaos in the schools, empty food shelves, I don't think they will be in for a particularly easy ride but much depends on whether there is opposition in the workplace and on the streets as there will be little opposition from the 'no magic money tree' Opposition. I doubt whether people will be protesting for austerity.
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
Yep, an analysis of that vote would be very interesting and revealing. Few would have predicted that outcome.
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
Who were we told that by though? IIRC it was 'labour sources' so perhaps they were just managing expectations.
I was talking about the attitude of the person quoted, seems wildly optimistic to me.
Ah, I see. I agree.
Leadbeater will be a great MP. Labour only scraped it though, this is a time for sighs of relief, not triumphant justification. I’ll be thanking those I know that campaigned in the seat. Depressing that so many people felt they could vote for someone like Galloway, for whatever reasons.
Depressing that so many people felt they could vote for someone like Galloway, for whatever reasons
shows Labour are vulnerable to the kind of ukip insurrection tories faced, fortunately there's no lightning rod like brexit
(also Galloway at best was polling at 6%, shows that pollsters still can't gauge outsiders)
Tories have lost 2 byelections on the trot tho, which is cheering
this is a time for sighs of relief, not triumphant justification.
Exactly
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
It was based on the bookmaker odds
Khalid Mahmood left the LP supposedly over the tendency towards 'woke' not going down well especially with (small c) conservative Muslim voters, and working class voters in general. He probably has a point but where do you go with that?
Galloway bizarrely threatening to challenge the result in court. Whoever is funding this is certainly getting their money's worth.
It might stop before we reach outright fascism. It might not. Who knows? There does seem to be a very real appetite for something closely resembling fascism in this country at the moment though.
Binners; when you put your mind to it, you can actually come up with something that is very intelligent, insightful and worthy of discussion. Why not do this more often? I'm 100% in agreement with you on this, and I think anyone who doesn't see this is naive or in denial. I've mentioned earlier in this thread, how we are sliding towards fascism, and this was dismissed by those who simply cannot/don't want to face the truth.
by hysterically yelling ‘RACIST!!‘ at everyone who even raises these issues, you are far more of the problem than they are.
That's just the kind of thing Lawrence Fox would come up with though. 😀
Leadbeater will be a great MP
Based on what evidence? She's only really there because of who her sister was, let's face it. She scraped through on a wave of sentiment; had Labour fielded any other faceless candidate, they'd have lost by a big margin.
There was the fact that George Galloway stood here and he took 8,000 votes from traditional Labour voters in the Asian community, which is fairly sizeable in Batley and Spen. (From BBC)
Dog whistling aside (the MSM do seem to be framing this in terms of race/culture, and yes, those were pertinent issues, but still); Labour face losing a significant chunk of voters because of Starmer's total lack of understanding of certain minority communities, and as mentioned, takes the 'Asian/Muslim' vote for granted. Well, he's seen here, how that can backfire. Being too much like Tony Blair isn't a great look...
Surely Owen Jones has ended his credibility now?
Giving a platform to a man that ran a divisive anti-semitic, transphobic, homophobic dog whistle campaign
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1410854848782864384?s=19
I was out on the doors a couple of times this week in Batley and Spen - it was interesting.
There was some real push back against Galloway after the hassle over the weekend. Also a lot of positivity for Kim even where people had issues with the party nationally or Starmer in particular
If it wasn't for Galloway Labour would have walked it - and Galloway's party is no UKIP so will only be any risk where he stands personally
Tories have lost 2 byelections on the trot tho, which is cheering
Both of which they expected to win. Maybe there is a bit of hope?
I assume the left wingers that tried to elect a Tory MP in B+S will think they won the argument?
Gorgeous George's supporters 'left wingers'? A lot of the Labour vote would have been holding their noses at the ballot box (me too).
IMO it wasn't a bad result for Labour, although not good for all three main parties, terrible for the LibDems.
Also terrible for all 3 far-right parties with openly racist agendas, the English Democrats, Ukip, and For Britain, they each got well below 1 percent, which challenges the commonly heard claim of the rise of the far-right.
The Tories were expected to do much better especially as many expected them to benefit from the fact that an independent (a former UKIP official) didn't stand this time. Although the ruling party winning from the official opposition is rare. I think it went beyond Labour expectation management.
The only person out of the long list of candidates that can particularly pleased with the result imo is George Galloway, who appears to be becoming evermore self-indulgent and attention-seeking with age. It really is a shame he is so much up his own arse that he can't put his undoubted skills to good constructive use. Although he did of course fail in his aim to cause a Labour defeat.
It was an extraordinarily dirty campaign and Labour don't come out of it untarnished with their disgraceful use of a photo showing Boris Johnson shaking the hand of a Hindu politician. Still I guess they will justify to themselves their dog whistle racism as against expectations they held on to the seat. Perhaps it is a tactic which we will see them use again in the future. Sad times.
IMO it wasn’t a bad result for Labour, although not good for all three main parties, terrible for the LibDems.
Also terrible for all 3 far-right parties with openly racist agendas, the English Democrats, Ukip, and For Britain, they each got well below 1 percent, which challenges the commonly heard claim of the rise of the far-right.
The Tories were expected to do much better especially as many expected them to benefit from the fact that an independent (a former UKIP official) didn’t stand this time. Although the ruling party winning from the official opposition is rare. I think it went beyond Labour expectation management.
The only person out of the long list of candidates that can particularly pleased the result imo is George Galloway, who appears to be becoming evermore self-indulgent and attention-seeking with age. It really is a shame he is so much up his own arse that he can’t put his undoubted skills to good constructive use. Although he did of course fail in his aim to cause a Labour defeat.
It was an extraordinarily dirty campaign and Labour don’t come out of it untarnished with their disgraceful use of a photo showing Boris Johnson shaking the hand of a Hindu politician. Still I guess they will justify to themselves their dog whistle racism as against expectations they held on to the seat. Perhaps it is a tactic which we will see them use again in the future. Sad times.
I'm going for a lie down, I pretty much agree with the Croydon Communist
Gorgeous George is from the same mould as Farage, the sooner that type of politician become extinct the better
So what does KS need to do next? How does he start to make ground and define himself?
Gorgeous George’s supporters ‘left wingers’?
Nope, try again.
I assume the left wingers that tried to elect a Tory MP in B+S
Who were they then? I didn't see any leftwingers running a campaign against Leadbetter.
So what does KS need to do next? How does he start to make ground and define himself?
Some policies which speak to the concerns of working peoople would be a good start, and less time spent trying to marginalise and stigmatise anyone to the left of Neil Kinnock. Maybe try having a go at the free market capitalists instead? He's got an open goal on the horizon with the end of furlough, rocketing property prices and rents, evictions, and the inevitable cut in universal credit post-covid. Perhaps he could focus on those instead of waving flags and saying nothing can be done.
The Independent: Batley and Spen’s new Labour MP refuses to say Keir Starmer was an asset during by-election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/batley-spen-by-election-result-kim-leadbeater-keir-starmer-b1876845.html
"According to a Survation poll of the constituency conducted in mid-June, Sir Keir had a net favourability rating of -32 per cent in the constituency, compared to a +18 rating for Boris Johnson."
Apparently the Tories never mentioned Kim Leadbeater by name in any of their election literature, they didn't even refer to her as the Labour Party candidate candidate, preferring instead to always refer to her as 'Starmer's candidate'.
They obviously thought that Starmer was more toxic to voters than Kim Leadbeater or even the Labour Party. Despite narrowly losing the election I suspect they were right and focusing on Starmer will be a reoccurring theme for them.
I don't suppose that Labour paraded their latest "coupe" Bercow on front of the people of Bateley and Spen, which must have helped them. I certainly didn't hear of any reports of him wowing voters there.
According to a Survation poll of the constituency conducted in mid-June, Sir Keir had a net favourability rating of -32 per cent in the constituency, compared to a +18 rating for Boris Johnson.”
The polling companies were wildly out on their voting estimates for B&S
Survation in particular
This is very true kimbers, the wild card appears to have been Galloway whose support they didn't get vaguely right.
Not good news for an organisation whose bread and butter relies on a reasonable accuracy of public opinion. Not sure how much that translates into other polling though, Survation has a reputation for being fairly accurate, in fact better than many.
They are going to have to work hard to regain confidence.
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
I would have said he would go for an Autumn election, based on the only thing they are capable of spouting about at the moment; the vaccine bounce.
But while the by-election was going on, a local councillor election was won by the Libdems in Cobham and Downside, true blue tory heartland and part of Dominc Raabs constituency. While this may appear insignificant, when coupled with the Libdems recently winning that by election, may indicate that some of the the tory heartlands are not liking what they see in Government.
Could be a protest vote, but will the tories go early with an election and risk potentially losing seats, or leave it to 2024? The problem with 2024 is that they could be even more unpopular at that point and lose seats and potentially the election.
I think it will be 2024, and if they become increasingly unpopular, particularly in the tory heartlands, make no mistake they will eject Johnson over the side before his first term is up.
the tories are ruthless. Labour should learn from this.
But while the by-election was going on, a local councillor election was won by the Libdems in Cobham and Downside, true blue tory heartland and part of Dominc Raabs constituency. While this may appear insignificant, when coupled with the Libdems recently winning that by election, may indicate that some of the the tory heartlands are not liking what they see in Government.
Probably the planning reforms, the Economist likened Tory voters to Hobbits who want to live quietly and comfortably in the Shire with nothing much changing. The planned reforms are seen as railroading crap housing stock in to benefit large developers
Turn out will be a factor as well
The polling companies were wildly out on their voting estimates for B&S
There was only one constituency poll, the Survation one, despite the media constantly referring to the Polls. Constituency polling is difficult to do and the sample size tends to be pretty small leading to double the margin of error to that of national polls. Even so the result was still "wrong" but people may have changed their minds in the last two weeks.
Starmer hails Labour revival after Kim Leadbeater wins Batley and Spen
"It is a start. Labour is back. Labour is coming home,” the party leader told cheering activists...
IMO it was a good result for Labour, but only for 2 reasons. Firstly because it was widely assumed that Labour would lose the seat. And secondly because it was massively better than the 1.6% vote they got a couple of weeks ago in Chesham and Amersham.
In every other respect it was a very bad result for Labour. They saw their 7% lead over the Tories in the general election 18 months ago reduced 1%.
If that was replicated throughout the country in a general election I can't begin to imagine how mindbogglingly huge the Tory majority would be.
Labour doing considerably worse than it did 18 months ago is not the sign of a revival. And if Starmer thinks it is Labour need to quickly replace him with someone with greater ambitions.
Someone who doesn't consider Labour doing considerably worse than it did 18 months ago under Corbyn is a step in the right direction.
In every other respect it was a very bad result for Labour. They saw their 7% lead over the Tories in the general election 18 months ago reduced 1%.
In a General Election George Galloway wouldn't take away 20% or so of their vote.
However, the Greens are becoming more popular & would take a fair chunk.
A by-election like this is almost impossible to extrapolate onto the national stage.
In a General Election George Galloway wouldn’t take away 20% or so of their vote.
You seem to have missed the point. Galloway's entire campaign was purely anti-Starmer. "If Starmer loses it's curtains for Starmer". Galloway's election posters showed him in a boxer's stance, idiotically.
It was only ever about fighting Starmer, Galloway knew that he had no chance of winning.
And yet 20% of voters backed Galloway, he got over 8k votes, another 300 odd and he would have succeeded.
The point is that Starmer is not an asset to Labour. If he was Labour voters would be flocking to the party, they would certainly be voting in far larger numbers than they did when Corbyn was leader. Galloway would have received probably less than 2% of the vote as was originally anticipated.
The truth is that Starmer is toxic. He has nothing to offer. And nothing that happened yesterday suggests that Labour are on course to reverse a 80 seat Tory majority, whatever Starmer says.
PrinceJohn’s assessment seems sound to me.
Alternatively, there's a fair chunk of the population who want 'none of the above' so have voted for GG despite him being a **** or not knowing much about him
Well certainly only a fool would use a by-election result to predict what the national state of the parties would be in a general election, but Starmer seems to have done exactly that..... Labour's coming home, apparently.
What you can come away with from the by-election result is that Starmer is not popular with voters, and Labour holding on by the skin of their teeth to one of their own seats is not a sign that it is heading in the right direction.
Under normal circumstances the opposition party should be winning seats from the governing party as it experiences the inevitable midterm blues.
SKS on a different plant
Starmer is not toxic in the way Corbyn was, complete opposite really, Mr invisible. It wasn't a bad result for Labour, and what did you expect him to say, it was really close and we scraped in. As for Galloway, it's all about Galloway end of.
Mr invisible.
This.
Mr forgettable.
A good candidate won though, which looking at much of the make up of parliament at the moment, is very much to be welcomed.
Yeah Starmer isn't exactly setting out a vision for voters to identify but he isn't imo Mr invisible in the way the LibDem leader is.
Both Galloway and the Tories focused heavily on Starmer with Galloway's 'curtains for Starmer' and the Tories only refering to Kim Leadbeater as 'Starmer's candidate' which suggests they saw Starmer as Labour's greatest weakness.
Between them they got over 50% of the vote so presumably it struck a chord with many of their voters.
Time will tell if hanging on to a Labour seat midterm marks a change in Labour's fortunes.
https://unherd.com/2021/07/batley-wont-save-labour/
SKS needs to build a coherent team with something to say ASAP. Otherwise the risk is that the LibDem collapse pales against the the Labour collapse
I don't think he has the team or the skillset to get basic messages out there in a way that will make an impact. He is too managerial and his rhetorical style that of a lawyer.
First thing I've heard that I'm into.
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1411626397647376385?s=19
Global markets have lots of problems associated with them, and taken a big knock. We've become too reliant on imported goods.
I like this - it will speak to the working class and makes a lot of sense post-Brexit and pandemic.
Tories will bloody hate it as it splits the nationalism right down the middle in the face of cheap global markets that they love to exploit. As consumers we might have to spend a bit more but that ought to be considered a good thing.
This was very much a Corbyn position.
Yeah, saw that earlier. The ‘details’ of the policy, such as they are, seem sound… public sector procurement to be more biased towards using UK based companies… but the top line message is weak in my opinion (and easily misinterpreted in the way you have to be a more general protectionist policy and an apologist’s approach to higher costs and less choice for consumers because of the costs and barriers that are rising due to the B word).
Anyway, my flippant reply an hour ago…
https://twitter.com/spittingcat/status/1411649771891216386?s=20
It seems like this is just pragmatism really, no?
I know that a lot in the labour party are deeply uncomfortable with what will inevitably be viewed as 'pandering to nationalists' but the reality is that there is a mood of increased nationalism in this country. To ignore that fact is just going to doom you to permanent opposition.
The Tory's nationalism is obvious in it's crass, flag-waving but there's little, if any substance to it. In fact if you look at fishing, farming etc, whole swathes of the British economy is being sold down the river in favour of cheap imports in the desperation for trade deals
So, having read this this morning, it seems like its an acceptance that Brexit is now a done deal, its irreversible, but now the labour party has to offer a better future in a Britain out of the EU.
Whether it'll work or not is anybodies guess. Its a big gamble, but it at least now Labour are stopping hiding from the subject in the 'don't mention the war' fashion that has existed up until now, thus just leaving the Tory's free to occupy the area totally unopposed
Add in a more local or regional aspect to this “public procurement focussed on homegrown companies” policy and you basically have the 1990s onwards German strategy. It also has medium to long term benefits, so even if Labour did get into power, it would be hard for them to trumpet the success of such an approach when trying to get re-elected. Still, it is the right approach.
It’s also designed to prepare the Labour Party for a reversal of policies on public ownership… by focussing on what can be done by changing how things are procured from the private sector, rather than whether they should be provided by the public sector instead. The first real hint of a return of Blairism, if you like.
It’s not really about being against “global markets” as regards what the public see on the shelves though, although I agree that would be popular with a certain section of voters they need to win back.
Binners shouldnt you be sticking up a picture of an Austin Princess or something?
Good policy, more like this and a comeback is on. It exposes the Tories Nationalism as paper thin.
Binners shouldnt you be sticking up a picture of an Austin Princess or something?
I can if you want. Nobody is talking about nationalising anything here though, are they?
That was the point of posting up pictures like this is because they were the product of the basket-case that was British Leyland, surely the tombstone of nationalised industries
And rightly or wrongly, when people looked at the labour party under the last leadership, with the spectre of Red Len in the background, a lot of people immediately thought 'Austin Allegro'
I can if you want. Nobody is talking about nationalising anything here though, are they?
Quite the opposite. Which, in terms of electability, is probably the right move. Sadly.
It's just one of those things though, isn't it?
Anyone with half a brain knows that utilities etc should be publicly owned and not handed as private monopolies to profiteers, but as soon as you mention the the 'N' word people automatically picture a broken down, poo-brown Austin Allegro, then Len McCluskey laughing like a Bond Villain as he calls the workforce out on strike for the third time that week
Getting elected promising one thing and doing another when elected is fine though as the Tories prove over and over.
& For me subsidising Nissan etc to be here is fine, even better if these subsidies could be replaced with the promise to buy x amount of cars for the police.
BUT imo there are votes to be won in nationalising water/rail/energy infrastructure. Maybe just start with one of the above though.
lot of people immediately thought ‘Austin Allegro’
That's thanks to people like you who deliberately mislead with false statements.
British Leyland was part-nationalised in 1975 for a relatively short period of time. The part-nationalisation was prompted by the disastrous failure of the private sector and the catastrophic loss of jobs doing nothing would have entailed.
The Austin Allegro was designed pre-nationalisation and therefore the product of the private sector.
Indeed it was the lack of new designs to replace outdated ones, whilst BL was fully privately owned, which was later to have such a crippling effect BL. It takes several years to design and start production of a new model.
The Austin Allegro was the tombstone of the basket case that was the privately owned car manufacturers.
And btw
Anyone with half a brain knows....
Is that what it's about?
That all may well be true Ernie (its classic British short-termism - creaming off profits and putting nothing back in to product development), but it's certainly not what the perception is.
And thats the only thing that matters really, isn't it?
If you ask most people what they think of nationlised industries I bet 90%+ immediately think of what I described and a tiny minority what you've just stated.
The 3 day week happened under the Tory's, but the common perception is that it was Labours fault
That’s thanks to people like you who deliberately mislead with false statements.
I think thats unfair Ernie, more of a useful idiot. 😉
In an ideal world utilities would be run as not for profit for the people. In reality we tried that and created hulking great beaucracies which were union riddled, poorly managed, poor value for money and still provided a terrible level of service, yet alone invested for the future.
I'll grant you today's system is hardly perfect but there is some regulation and future provisioning, when the water industry was privatised they were forced to upgrade large elements of a basically a Victorian system. If you want to take a pop art privatised services start with the incompetents that set the contracts and regulate the industry. That would be government again, you know the public sector.
That all may well be true Ernie
It is true. The Austin Allegro was designed before BL was part-nationalised, unless someone with half a brain can explain it to me I can't understand why you have brought it up.
EDIT : Sorry mate I was being disingenuous you've explained why. Apparently it's because it's a well-known myth peddled by right-wingers and therefore it's okay to repeat it even though it's not true.
I know that a lot in the labour party are deeply uncomfortable with what will inevitably be viewed as ‘pandering to nationalists’
It's not really, it's just good economic sense overall.
The global economy does have a lot to answer for generally and no one says we can't have both.
It's hardly protectionism either really.
However let's not kid ourselves this was very much front and centre of Corbyn's 2019 programme which boiled the piss of many a centrist commentator.
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1411606027448029191?s=19
It's good that they are coming up with something useful. I've got common ground here and there has to be something post-Brexit other than cheap meat deals.
Quite the opposite. Which, in terms of electability, is probably the right move. Sadly.
Might not be Nationalised in name but plenty of institutions get money from the government via the slightly dodgy back door.
State-corporatism.
Nationalisation makes a lot of sense these days and will certainly.be making a come back at some point.
The Tory’s nationalism is obvious in it’s crass, flag-waving but there’s little, if any substance to it.
This.
And leaves a nice opening for Labour to exploit with real meat on the bones.
If you want to “build it in Britain”, you either need to free up manufacturers from the red tape and cost put in place by Brexit, or subsidise them, or both.
But this ‘new’ policy isn’t about that, it is just adopting the policy that most national governments put in place over the last 30 years… to heavily prioritise local private contractors and providers in state run and funded projects.
The problem with anything that is nationalised is that it becomes political.
I agree that critical infrastructure shouldn't be run for profit though. The problem with much investment is that the return is slow. Governments are interested in the next election, not 20 years down the road. But it is this type of planning and investment that is needed.
Needs to be devolved.
My purchasing guide is:
Union Jack - put it back.
Welsh dragon - get in mun
In an ideal world utilities would be run as not for profit for the people. In reality we tried that and created hulking great beaucracies which were union riddled, poorly managed, poor value for money and still provided a terrible level of service, yet alone invested for the future.
Working in a power station that was built by the SSEB that is definitely not the case. All the problems that manifested themselves over the years were a result of privatisation.
I'm not sure what your problem with unionisation is, I'd certainly have preferred it if they weren't just there in name only when we got ****ed over on our pensions. Another legacy of a successful nationalised company sold to the private sector.
We also never privatised our water industry and it seems to be doing okay.
I don't disagree with the concept but it's rather underwhelming if this is the big idea he's been working on.
Oh, and for those who claim the 'war on the left' is a myth, have a look at some of the quotes in this article.(maybe done already, I don't keep up):
In an ideal world utilities would be run as not for profit for the people. In reality we tried that and created hulking great beaucracies which were union riddled, poorly managed, poor value for money and still provided a terrible level of service, yet alone invested for the future.
This is utter bollox - its the right wing propaganda!
Nationalised utilities were cheaper and performed better than private ones. always.
The other issue being missed here is that in times of national crisis the party in power always gets a huge poll boost.
Anyone know of an example where economic autarchy worked? It's a bit like 'I'm Backing Britain', doing unpaid overtime and paying over the odds due to lost comparative advantage. Why aren't the shelves filling up with shellfish?
Nationalised utilities were cheaper and performed better than private ones. always.
Had the nationalised utilities been given the level of investment privatised ones have (often at public expense), then it's pretty obvious we'd have much better services all round. It's the neoliberal plan, to run down public services, drive down public satisfaction and trust in them, push loads of propaganda about how much better privatised services are, and then sell everything off at a discount rate. Preferably to your mates. Managed decline. Demonising unions was part of that plan, and as evident here, that propaganda was extremely effective. So we're now in a situation where the profits from some of our privatised utilities and services, actually help subsidise other nations' state run counterparts. Yet we still end up paying to subsidise our privatised ones. Great.
Nationalised utilities were cheaper and performed better than private ones. always
Northern Ireland nearly went dry a few years ago
Glasgow used to get crypto boil water notices remarkably frequently recently
The water industry has more than one model of ownership, some have worked better than others, they also have different regulators, different issues and priorities
The average age of the infrastructure of all these companies is getting older, pipes and sewers aren't being replaced or rehabbed at anywhere near the pace we need, the can is getting kicked down the road again and again
But that's an argument for investment in maintaining existing infrastructure and replacing when necessary. The reason water companies are having to fix old Victorian plumbing etc, is because it should have been done decades ago. Nationalised industries didn't 'fail' because they were nationalised. They failed because of a lack of investment. Because successive governments preferred to spend public money on things like wars and tax breaks for their rich chums instead. If you see public utilities only in economic terms, then you are missing their true value to society. So a bus service is 'unprofitable'; it's still of great value to those who rely on it. This is why society needs to have control of such services. This is why nationalisation is crucial.
. Nationalised industries didn’t ‘fail’ because they were nationalised. They failed because of a lack of investment.
because you are competing with all the other spending priorities, health, pensions, etc The costs in E&W were essentially outsourced to the new water companies who then "taxed" people through their water bills with a regulator charged with managing the investments, outputs and customer bills. The regulation has evolved and could have been stronger and will need to be stronger still. For example most water companies drought plans are built on assets that don't work and which the regulator turns a blind eye to
publicly owned NI didn't invest and almost went dry
publicly owned Scotland is like E&W twenty years ago relying on plenty of water resource and a very long coastline and a complicit regulatory regime. Water consumption per head in Scotland is higher than E&W as is leakage
Because successive governments preferred to spend public money on things like wars and tax breaks for their rich chums instead
and because until 1976 water was not seen as important and until we had to implement the water framework directive in the eighties sewage wasn't important
because you are competing with all the other spending priorities, health, pensions, etc The costs in E&W were essentially outsourced to the new water companies
And guess what - they don't need to.
The government doesn't have a finite amount of pounds limited by spending quantity (it may make political decisions on the priority of what to spend. But it's not becaue of lack of money.)
So much rubbish we have swallowed over the last 40 years.
This idea of Government spending being limited by not enough £££ is causing so much unnecessary pain to society.
We need to crack it wide open.
(The water companies don't really offer much competition do they?)
The water companies don’t really offer much competition do they?
The problem with water is that people drink it and industry manufactures with it, so providing competition in terms of core product is hard due to the need to manage quality as well as taste and odour issues. Sewerage is even harder although on site treatment works for some. Add in SEMD and it gets even more difficult. Retail is really thin margins the Cave report view was that household competition would add £50 to everyone's bill for no service improvement, the non household market in E&W is failing due to lack of margin and financial risk. In Scotland it's a lot easier due to a higher tariff starting point and therefore higher margin.
The industry has a diverse ownership model and that needs to be used more to show what works and what doesn't and then apply regulation around the best in class pushing the others to step up. However the metrics are complex and gaming has happened. There are also historical issues with the state of the assets or lack thereof
Cost of debt was traditionally where water companies outperformed to get shareholder returns, that's now a lot tighter. The ODI mechanism is still clunky.
One Day International?
Some kinds of bigotry are more important than others eh. Imagine if JC had said anything similar to some of Phillips' statements about Muslims. And yet...
But Muslims are not Jews. Muslims seems to be fair play (see Tories and a lot of people in this country)
Nationalised utilities were cheaper and performed better than private ones. always
Not sure any data would back that up and the data would no doubt be very hard to compare anyway.
Privatisation can work but it has to be heavily governed and controlled (which it never is)
The competition can bring more innovation and efficiency because it is necessary to survive versus a nationalised company that doesn't really need to think about it as money will still come in.