Andy Burnham says Labour must put energy and water under public control
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/16/andy-burnham-energy-water-under-public-control-keir-starmer
Posted by No_Breadfruit_4901
Andy Burnham says Labour must put energy and water under public control
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/16/andy-burnham-energy-water-under-public-control-keir-starmer
Posted by No_Breadfruit_4901
32 Comments
[deleted]
isn’t starmer already doing that for great british energy?
The cost of doing this is huge though, so this will be interesting if they are going to borrow like mental whilst bond markets etc already arent our friend
They all say shit like this until they get in, then the crippling reality of the public finances forces them to into inertia.
There’s currently £40-50bn a year of mostly private money going to the energy transition, if that’s going to be public money instead then how are we going to pay for it? To say nothing of all the existing assets, either in water or energy.
He says “under public control”, not public ownership, so I guess that explains it. But energy already has a price cap, the renewable plants are already operating under CfD contracts set by government. Energy is almost completely controlled by the regulatory bodies, water less so.
I guess this boils down to increasing the power of Ofwat and Ofgem.
The biggest thing he said for me was a council house building programme on a scale not seen since WWII. One of the biggest failures of New Labour was its total disregard for council housing:
>The official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years. (If we don’t include 2010 – the year when David Cameron became PM – this number drops to 6,510.) Mr Copley has contrasted this figure with the record of Mrs Thatcher’s government, which never built fewer than 17,710 homes in a year.
https://fullfact.org/economy/who-built-more-council-houses-margaret-thatcher-or-new-labour/
We’re still living with that failure today.
Not going to happen. Nice byelection flag to fly though.
Nationalisation of water shouldn’t even be a debate now. If you’re unsure why it’s so important watch Dirty Business on Channel 4.
Imagine the dvla being in charge of if you get water and heat
Here come the bots to shoot it down. We currently live in a privatised system, is this the only option?!
Reminder that the average profit margin of electricity distributors is 2%. You spend as much subsidising the bills of people on benefits as you do on profit for the energy distributors.
Energy sure, it’s littered with money.
What people don’t realise about water is it’s so far behind in terms of processes, people, systems and infrastructure that it needs significantly more money than what the British tax payers could afford to get it running efficiently, it’s a shame it was ever privatised to begin with but the cats out the bag now, water would only get worse under British tax payer control.
He’s not wrong, they should never have been sold off for a quick buck in the first place.
The UK energy industry is worth about £264bln, or roughly 10% of the national debt or £10,000 of additional spending per household.
It’s pie in the sky stuff.
https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/insights/uk-energy/
>“deindustrialisation and privatisation” of Britain had left areas like Makerfield “without good jobs and people unable to afford the basics.”
I look forward to Burnhams explanation of how privatisation and nationalism will create jobs (increasing costs), but also result in more affordable public services (reducing revenue).
Yeah yeah and he’s going to give us all world peace too.
Pension investments. They can’t go bust and the private companies knew that so the level of infrastructure demise would burden the public purse massively.
Hamburg hat die Wasserversorgung vor 3Jahren rekommunalisiert, jetzt zahlen die Verbraucher um die 60% der vorherigen Rechnungen, irgendwie logisch
Just so much populist snake oil
>Burnham said the “deindustrialisation and privatisation” of Britain had left areas like Makerfield “without good jobs and people unable to afford the basics.”
He’s deliberately conflating two different things here and being loose with facts. Privatisation has nothing to do with deindustrialisation and if anything the former has increased the number of jobs. Makerfield deindustrialisation started in the 19th C and continued til the early 60s (at least the coal mining part) and in fact was actively accelerated by the postwar nationalisation of the coal industry.
> “I’ve done that with buses in Greater Manchester. I was the first to do it. Margaret Thatcher deregulated them … and then they just work for the private shareholders and not for the paying public. I put them back under public control with the £2 fares..”
Yes mate, you can set the fares at £2 by throwing buckets of central government money at them. They don’t actually cost less to run you’re just taking the money from taxpayers outside your area. Same as the SNP: it’s easy to spend other people’s money, not so easy when you have to make the sums add up. Also with the Thatcher bone… IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO! We’ve had 13 years of Labour Government since then! Half the population aren’t old enough to remember her and nobody outside the Labour ~~religion~~ party cares. (He sounds a lot like Trump here btw).
>I wouldn’t have just gone anywhere [to] carpet bag, you know, any old constituency. It matters to me that I have a connection
Cool story bro.
>“We’ve got to talk seriously about reindustrialising the north-west, getting those good jobs, changing education so it’s not all about the university route but it’s also about the technical paths for kids to get into those good jobs.”
Trump again. Industry is not coming back to the North West or anywhere else in Britain. Labour costs are too high and we don’t have the raw materials nor an empire to provide them. Globalisation is here and it’s not going away. Deal with it or spend the rest of your life tilting at windmills.
>Burnham told the BBC that deindustrialisation had begun in the 1980s
Patently untrue.
This is so much disingenuous populist clap trap. Reform for the left.
I know private water companies are rubbish at spending on repairs and infrastructure. But governments only think 5 years ahead until the next election, so governments would also delay paying for expensive repairs when they can leave it for a future government to sort out.
Can someone ask him if he’ll tell Palantir to fuck off?
With what money?
gotta get the public finances in check before you can do fun things.
Is the ability to compete inherently present? For water, trains and energy (electricity and gas) it is not as pipeline availability restricts possible competition as well as wholesale and retail customers allowed to be the same company doesn’t help.
It doesn’t need to be privatised. Just regulated so it’s a controlled market. Competition is good – see octopus energy for example.
“under public control” doesn’t mean nationalisation btw. It’s just a word salad to mean the council have more control over routes and prices. Which is a good thing, but it’s not publicly owned.
No. Not without a plan. We’ve seen some train lines nationalise and it means fuck all. Sams insane costs and same issues. It’s an infrastructure issue. Unless you’re willing to nationalise a service with a view to spend x amount. It’s pointless. Let some other business try to throw money into it while a proper plan is formalised.
Because it’s going so well for the recently nationalised rail services….
Didn’t we used to have stand pipes and rolling blackouts when in public ownership?
Is this the guy who set up the leaseback deals for the schools and NHS when Blair was in charge
What difference would this actually make? Water is like 25 quid a month. Even if you half that( which is fantastical), you save some one 150 quid a year, less than 2 days pay on minimum wage. It’s a policy that sounds grand but makes little difference to the every person.
Look forward to see how he makes up the tens of billions of pounds to do that.
Would be surprised if the current government didn’t eventually end up doing this, having already nationalised rail & steal. I wouldn’t expect them to announce and do all their planned nationalisations at once, but rather would slowly drip feed them over the course of a term or two. Thatcher & Major spent the better part of two decades slowly privatising everything, bit by bit
Fuck off, Andy. You’re tanking the pound!
Important to post these articles but it is infuriating to read them.