In the heat of England’s dry summer, there are hosepipe bans to stop the watering of gardens. There are also urgent pleas from privately owned water companies and the government’s Environment Agency for the public to be more careful about water supplies.
“Let’s Save Water” is a £75 million ($101 million) publicity campaign that is both well-intentioned and a signal of precisely the kind of popular issue that new Prime Minister Andy Burnham wants to jump on because it ignites the passions of people all over Britain. That’s why on Day One of his new government, he is also doing away with a tax on electricity supplies. But something bigger is happening, signalling an ideological shift away from four decades of political consensus.
Part of Mr Burnham’s thinking is to recognise that privatisation of the once publicly owned water industry in 1989 by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government has been a failure. The issue is on one level hugely complex, but at its heart it’s very simple. Ask almost anyone in England and they will talk of rising water bills, wasted water, underground pipes that leak, sewage in the rivers and seas and private profit but huge public dissatisfaction.
Within Mr Burnham’s group of key advisers, water – like electricity and other utilities – is seen as a political opportunity. It’s the kind of issue everyone understands – and that could ultimately be a huge vote-winner. Mr Burnham says he wants to see “greater public control” of the water and energy sectors. There are rumblings that he would like the biggest water company of all – Thames Water – to be nationalised. That’s ambitious, difficult and legally fraught but also may prove hugely popular and precisely the kind of populist battle that Mr Burnham cares about and that he knows voters understand.
Of course, a new prime minister has many other priorities in his or her first week in the job. Mr Burnham has already talked to US President Donald Trump. They are unlikely to be political soulmates, but duty called. He has also begun to refashion the British government with his new ministers. But water and public services together are issues that so many British people complain about and that fit with Mr Burnham’s past track record.
As the mayor of Greater Manchester, he saw in public transport a problem around bus services. It resonated with ordinary people, and he fought hard to solve it. Water is therefore precisely that kind of problem that voters nationwide complain about and understand. There is already a campaign to cut water usage in England and Wales by 28 litres per person per day. Currently, the public uses on average 140 litres per person per day.
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Andy Burnham delivers his inaugural speech as the UK's new Prime Minister. Getty Images -
Mr Burnham greets supporters as he arrives at No 10 Downing Street. Reuters -
Mr Burnham thanks supporters outside No 10. Reuters -
King Charles III and Mr Burnham at Buckingham Palace, London, where he invited the leader of the Labour Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government. AFP -
Mr Burnham delivers his speech. AFP -
Mr Burnham and his wife Marie-France van Heel at Buckingham Palace. AFP -
Mr Burnham arrives for an audience with the king at Buckingham Palace. AFP
Official advice includes positive suggestions that people should turn off the tap when brushing their teeth, have shorter showers, and run washing machines and dishwashers only with a full load. It’s all good sensible environmental advice, but advice is not enough.
Brushing my teeth differently will not solve the problem of Thames Water, the biggest water company of all. It’s about £20 billion in debt, yet it is a monopoly supplier to 16 million people of an essential commodity necessary for human survival. How – most of us wonder – can a huge monopoly with so many customers fail to make money? Where has the cash gone? (To investors is the shorthand answer, rather than to improving services.)
Something big – something utterly profound – has gone wrong. And not just in the Thames area. Water privatisation in Britain began in 1989. Ms Thatcher’s Conservative government was ideologically opposed to public ownership. Water and sewerage systems were sold off to for-profit companies owned by private investors, including some from abroad. Yet in recent years, numerous television documentaries, whistle-blowers, environmentalists and campaigning organisations with names like “Surfers Against Sewage” have brought together a loose but powerful coalition to change direction.
For years, we have heard about Britain’s lovely lakes, rivers and seas being polluted by human and animal waste, while ancient water delivery systems with cracked or broken pipes mean that so much of Britain’s water is unnecessarily wasted.
It hits the image of England as a “green and pleasant land” where rain is a frequent occurrence. There are already concerns that climate change has changed that romantic notion. Where I live on the coast not far from London, it has not rained heavily in weeks. Grass in local parkland is bone dry and yellow. There are those hosepipe bans on sprinkling water on gardens or washing cars, and some residents remain suspicious about sea-bathing and the water quality on local beaches.
And so, it seems odd to remember all the wonderful English literary references to rainy weather and a damp climate. In Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare wrote of “the rain it raineth every day”. In the great romantic novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte made the fierceness of England’s rain a key part of that love story.
In the 2020s, it looks like Mr Burnham may make water into a powerful and very popular political issue for his new government. Whether he can fix it is a different question.
