It's clear that the current privatisation deals, coupled with very lax regulation, has failed. The promise that privatisation would bring efficiency and competition never delivered, instead we had bumbling incompetence and greed with so much money being extracted from our railways, utilities and other public services and funnelled into greedy pockets with very little in return.Whilst re-nationalisation is the opposite extreme I personally believe that it is the only option in the current climate. Trying to bolster up the regulation will be very hard to do given the existing adversarial management culture of the various franchises. But it is a viable alternative if proper regulation can be put in place, history tells us the UK is not good at this though.Re-nationalisation isn't a switch that gets flicked, it's going to be a very long term project for many of these utilities, either putting things in place to take over once existing contracts expire, or forced buyouts where necessary. Energy will take decades not years, so it needs joined up thinking between political parties so that a change of Government doesn't try to undo everything the previous Government started purely because they can't possibly continue with any work the other side instigated. Cross party support for longer term these issues is key. I fear for this as our current crop of politicians do not think any longer term than their next prospective employment.Cost is less of an issue as the Government is almost certainly going to have to step in anyway for many of these businesses. People need water, so if Thames Water fails then something is going to need to happen to fix that, it's not something that will just sort itself out. The question is what kind of a haircut the creditors will receive on the huge debts that Thames Water has built up. If the Government doesn't step in the creditors (a lot of which are pension companies) could make huge losses on it, but also the Government doesn't want to end up liable for every single penny of the debts. Here's an article from April discussing the options for Thames Water: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/18/whitehall-blueprint-for-thames-water-nationalisation-could-see-state-take-on-bulk-of-15bn-debtI'd also add student loans to the list of things to renationalise (they're semi nationalised but a huge amount of the underlying debt was sold off via a securitisation deal). The interest rates that students are being charged is bordering on criminal (it's either 6.25% or 7.9% depending on the plan you are on).
John Kettlekey ● 358d