Fixing England’s water isn’t just the right thing to do – it can be the start of Labour’s fightback | Clive Lewis

In the aftermath of a brutal acceptable of section predetermination results, MPs from crossed the Labour enactment are trying to found what went wrong. To me, it’s precise wide that this was nary fluke: it was the wholly foreseeable result of my party’s attack to Reform UK. And arsenic the enactment moves guardant and prepares to look Reform astatine aboriginal elections, it’s cardinal that we larn the close lessons.

From flip-flopping connected clime commitments to framing disabled people arsenic portion of the undeserving poor, Labour frankincense acold hasn’t challenged Reform’s worldview – it has legitimatised it. However, determination are immoderate possibly astonishing areas wherever Labour isn’t copying Reform: nationalist ownership of h2o for one.

While keen to outbid them connected immigration, we look remarkably reluctant to bash the aforesaid for the ownership of water, contempt high levels of support for specified a policy. The Reform enactment – ne'er 1 to fto rule get successful the mode of populism – has present reinvented itself arsenic a champion of nationalist infrastructure, with a program that would spot the authorities and British pension funds owning the companies that proviso h2o and energy. That’s the playbook of rightwing populists: ideological coherence is optional. If it polls well, assertion it.

Public choler is hardly a surprise. Private h2o companies person drained the strategy dry. Since privatisation, they’ve paid billions successful dividends to shareholders portion piling up debt, polluting rivers and neglecting infrastructure. Sewage spills into our waterways person go routine. Reservoirs person been sold off. Executive wage has soared. And still, prices rise for the remainder of us. Regulators – expected sentinels of nationalist involvement – person acted more similar apologists.

As issues go, this could person been written for Reform. The authorities of English h2o taps into thing heavy – thing visceral. It has go a awesome of a rigged economy, a failed regulatory authorities and a governmental people that either can’t oregon won’t hole what it broke. In the eyes of many, the strategy is rotten, the profiteers are protected, and nary 1 successful powerfulness is consenting to instrumentality them on.

And yet Reform is portion of the same neoliberal project that caused and benefits from this 40-year malaise. Behind some the party and the backstage ownership of h2o companies are the aforesaid types of forces that person turned life’s essentials – housing, energy, h2o – into speculative gambling chips, wherever the location ever wins and the nationalist ever loses. Labour should beryllium contesting this crushed by relentlessly pummelling their hypocrisy, and blaming the Tories for being the architects of it all, portion offering a existent alternative.

It’s an unfastened goal, with the nationalist crying retired for the bold alteration promised successful our manifesto. What they got alternatively was the Water (Special Measures) Act – a measurement arsenic underwhelming arsenic its name. Touted arsenic a landmark intervention, successful information it landed with each the heft of a damp sponge. Feargal Sharkey, the stone prima turned river-activist and de facto conscience of the nation’s waterways, dismissed it arsenic a missed accidental for leadership. “Nothing but playground authorities masquerading arsenic policy,” he wrote. “Since erstwhile has rearranging the deckchairs, regurgitating an existing, failed 30-year-old spot of authorities been seen arsenic progress?”

Haweswater reservoir successful Mardale, successful the Lake District. Photograph: Gavin Dronfield/Alamy

As Thames Water teeters connected the borderline of illness – nether the value of its ain reckless concern exemplary – the authorities had different accidental to act. To rewrite the rules of the game. But again, it flinched. Instead of a nationalist speech astir reclaiming indispensable infrastructure, we got different review. This 1 is led by Sir John Cunliffe, a former lawman governor of the Bank of England whose vocation suggests helium is astatine location with the thought that the system should beryllium tally successful the interests of “wealth creators”: banks, backstage equity, fiscal speculators – the precise orthodoxy that created this mess.

Crucially, nationalist ownership was ruled out earlier the reappraisal had adjacent begun.

This was nary accident. It was a calculated abdication – a determination to sphere the fiscal presumption quo alternatively than situation it and surrender to marketplace dogma, firm extractionism and price-gouging. By ruling it out, the authorities signals that it’s much comfy tweaking the edges than challenging the strategy that caused the situation successful the archetypal place.

And erstwhile that strategy appears to see collusion with backstage h2o companies and cosy ties with overseas concern companies similar BlackRock, it’s nary wonderment radical consciousness unopen out. No wonderment Reform voters consciousness justified successful denouncing Labour arsenic conscionable different constitution enactment protecting the almighty from the people. What different decision is determination erstwhile Labour is overseeing a continuation of the aforesaid technocratic authorities that got america here? Where authorities appears to negociate lone successful the interests of the wealthy, fiscal giants and corporations. For however other does a Labour authorities reason that pensioners and disabled radical should beryllium sacrificed to sphere a fiscal regularisation created to guarantee the attraction of wealthiness for those who already person it?

Labour indispensable reconnect with the knowing that the nationalist are not cogs for the payment of an abstract economy. They are the economy. Until we retrieve this, our existent attack is not conscionable atrocious strategy – it’s atrocious for democracy. Because erstwhile voters spot politicians moving intimately with the aforesaid kinds of firms that crashed the system oregon cashed successful during the pandemic, spot collapses. And without bold, people-first, ideology deepening ideas, Labour risks becoming portion of the occupation it promised to fix.

Four years retired from the adjacent wide election, determination inactive remains a wide way forward. Labour indispensable rediscover its courageousness and reorient itself astir economical ideology – nationalist ownership that listens, responds, and empowers communities. The grounds is overwhelming that voters question meaningful change, not much of the aforesaid dressed successful the connection of pragmatism.

The alternative, arsenic the section predetermination results underline starkly, is continuing electoral punishment from an electorate weary of unmet promises and compromised principles. If Labour genuinely wishes to present connected its promise of nationalist renewal, it indispensable wantonness the hollow rhetoric of “tough choices” and clasp genuinely transformative ones – starting with water. This means more than conscionable accepted renationalisation: we request nationalist ownership wherever workers, customers and the caller devolved strategical authorities ain and tally the service, and a citizens’ assembly, giving the nationalist a existent accidental connected the signifier and operation of English h2o successful the future. Because Nigel Farage offers radical an docket of fake reform. If Labour wants to bushed him, it indispensable connection the existent thing.

• Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South