Beginning to See the Light: Who put the ‘P’ in ‘Crab’? Liz did, Liz did.

 

People say you shouldn’t stay down here too long 

Lose your sense of light and dark 

Lose your sense of smell 

 
Truss, who was in charge at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) between 2014 and 2016, oversaw ‘efficiency’ plans set out in the 2015 spending review to reduce Environment Agency funding by £235m. This included a £24m cut from a government grant for environmental protection, including surveillance of water companies to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, between 2014-15 and 2016-17, according to the National Audit Office. 

The parliamentary party is equally culpable; on the eve of Boris Johnson’s Cop26 climate conference last year, Tory MPs voted against stopping sewage being dumped in rivers, without requiring firms by law to make the investments needed to stop it happening for millions of hours, year after year. 

Statistics show that sewage was dumped into waters containing shellfish for 207,013 hours in one year. The worst offenders were South West, Southern Water and Anglian Water.  

Some of England’s best-known fishing areas have affected, raising fears the shellfish could be contaminated. The longest sewage dump event into shellfish water last year took place at Morecambe Bay by United Utilities, lasting 5,000 hours (208 days!).  

Environment Agency data shows that sewage monitors have worked only 15% of the time, meaning that figure could be much higher. In Sussex, Southern Water dumped sewage into Chichester Harbour for 4,996 hours in just one overflow. 
 

‘the amount of raw sewage pumped into seas and rivers by the water companies has increased 2,553% in the past five years’

 
Earlier this year, the director of Whistable Oyster Company, James Green, said: ‘After the first spill event at the end of June, the next three months we had close to zero sales as each time we tried to open, there was another spill event and associated cases of norovirus.’ 

Southern Water said at the time that the sources of bacteria getting into the sea were ‘many and varied‘ and not simply from its discharges. 

This is not a new problem, Environment Agency data suggests the amount of raw sewage pumped into seas and rivers by the water companies has increased 2,553% in the past five years. 

Despite doing their best to poison us the water firms have excelled in looking after their own interests, paying £72bn in dividends to shareholders since privatisation. Privatisation was sold as being the best way of repairing the crumbling infrastructure, unfortunately all the money went in dividends as firms priorities shareholders over customers . The CEO’s also had their snouts deep in the trough, collectively awarding themselves a combined £58m in salaries and bonuses since 2017. In the last year alone the average bosses bonus increased by 20%. 

The water crisis looks as if it could be another nail in the Tory coffin, as voters in Tory heartlands, such as Surrey, are turning against them.  

A retiree from Cranleigh, told the Guardian, ‘I have mostly voted Conservative, but I won’t do it again.’ Asked whether the water crisis had changed her vote, she said: ‘Water and the energy companies – the profits they make are a joke.’ 

Two weekends ago the 9,000 residents had no water during one of warmest spells on record. 

At the last election the LibDems lost Guildford, which Cranleigh is a part of, by 3,337 votes; the constituency is 11th on the party’s lists of winnable seats. 

Zoe Franklin, who will their local candidate, said: ‘In Cranleigh the water issue comes up on the doorstep all the time. At the weekend people were really confused and angry. The general feeling was: ‘We’re gonna have a hosepipe ban soon. How is that fair, when I see leaks all the time. And now I’ve got no water?’’ 

Another resident, a deputy headteacher, said: ‘In the last eight years there have been at least 20 spurts when the pipes have burst and it’s been like a geyser or a massive leak. There’s frustration with Thames Water because they just don’t listen and they don’t come. This area is moving away from the Tories because there’s been so much housing. I’m really in favour of that, but there hasn’t been any investment and the systems are just overwhelmed.’ 

It would appear that the blue wall could be as much under threat as the red wall was in 2019. But, rather than asking will the blue wall turn red or orange (LibDems), we should consider will the red wall turn from blue to red or orange? 

In their struggle to see who is the most right-wing Sunak and Truss are dumping large parts of the platform it was elected on in 2019, primarily Boris Johnson’s pledge to level up the country.  

Younger, more educated voters have been moving out of London to the capital’s commuter belt for some time, changing the demographic makeup of numerous seats. As a result, many marginal constituencies in the SE, such as Esher and Walton, and Winchester, now comprise of large numbers of graduates and professionals, groups that were reliable Conservative voters. Now many of the, especially those of working age, are more likely to be Remainers, to be more socially liberal on issues such as immigration and the environment, and are less tolerant of anti-woke, anti-green posturing. 

The Conservatives hold 21 seats across the south (including London) that voted Remain with majorities smaller < 10,000. In 11 of these, Labour is the main challenger, while the Liberal Democrats are the second party in 10 others.  
 

‘Sunak and Truss are dumping large parts of the platform it was elected on in 2019’

 
In addition, Truss’s focus on tax cuts, and reluctance to commit to help people with rising fuel bills threatens an important part of the party’s electoral coalition. First-time Conservative voters in the red wall tend to hold more left-wing attitudes on public spending and redistribution than their counterparts in the south. As cost-of-living crisis escalates many will be expect government intervention not tax cuts. 

If expectations about levelling-up end in disappointment, there is the possibility that those who lent their vote to the Tories in 2019 will return to Labour at the next election putting many of the 45 ‘red wall’ seats lost to the Conservatives back in play. 

Recent polls endorse this. Two weeks ago 29% of all voters said Truss would be the best PM, against 28% for Starmer. Now, an Opinium poll for the Observer, shows Truss has dropped to 23% while Starmer, who announced his price cap policy only last Monday, has increased his score to 31%. When the choice was Starmer versus Sunak, 29% backed Starmer and 23% Sunak. 

Labour now enjoys an 8 points lead, its biggest Opinium poll lead in months. 

A poll on Saturday for the Times by YouGov, whose current methodology tends to give Labour a higher figure than Opinium’s, showed Starmer’s party enjoying its biggest lead in 10 years, on 43%, 15 points ahead of the Conservatives. 

The  series of crises we are experiencing are the culmination of the Thatcherite response to the problems of the 70s. The failed privatisation model, economic decline in post-industrial regions, problems with supply chains and over-dependence on China cannot be blamed on militant trade unions they are the result of blind subservience to flawed theories of globalisation. 
 

‘The series of crises we are experiencing are the culmination of the Thatcherite response to the problems of the 70s’

 
Conservatism is still rooted in Thatcherism, but the people it serves has changed. No longer is it the ‘respectable people’,  doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, now it’s hedge fund managers and property developers, the uber rich. 

Maurice Cowling, the influential right-wing historian, in the late 1970s wrote; ‘It is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.’ 

In some ways Johnson, or more accurately Dominic Cummings understood that a new model was required. Future prosperity was for us all, not elites, not just London and SE, but levelling up, creating a prosperous, productive country. This was supported by a minority of influential Conservatives, such as Michael Gove, who understood this change in the political weather. The levelling up agenda was an attempted response, but that vision has died a death alongside Johnson’s premiership. 

Gove, this week, came out in support of Sunak, but, with a reluctant acceptance that Truss will be the new leader. His comments show an understanding that a new government should have a coherent economic plan. 

‘And here I am deeply concerned that the framing of the leadership debate by many has been a holiday from reality.’ 

‘The answer to the cost of living crisis cannot be simply to reject further ‘handouts’ and cut tax.’  

‘Proposed cuts to national insurance would favour the wealthy, and changes to corporation tax apply to big businesses, not small entrepreneurs. I cannot see how safeguarding the stock options of FTSE 100 executives should ever take precedence over supporting the poorest in our society, but at a time of want, it cannot be the right priority.’ 

Instead, the basis for the new government were first set out 11-years ago, when five Tory MPs first elected in 2010 (Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Chris Skidmore), put into words their view of the world: ‘The future of Britain’s prosperity lies in … free market values,’ declared its introduction. Taxes should be cut, ‘the ‘handout’ culture’ should be ended, and ‘Britain should seek to regain control’ from the EU, and negotiate ‘its own trade deals’. If these steps were taken, the book concluded, ‘Britain’s relative decline … is not inevitable.‘ 

Even when their book was published its premise was out-of-date, the 2008 GFC had already discredited deregulated capitalism. The following years bought us austerity, stagnant wages, and regional decline  which convinced both May and Johnson that a Conservative government could no longer just be about liberating business and confining the state.  

In truth this ersatz socialism was mere words, and many government members stayed loyal to the already outmoded Thatcherism.  

In addition, the right-wing press remained Thatcherite in its economic assumptions, spewing stories that unions and regulation are nearly always bad, and shareholders and homeowners are the interest groups that matter. 

The party increasingly values politicians who refuse to change direction, who become even more loyal to the dogma. ‘Leave’s’ foundations were decades of stubbornness which was continually escalated, made rigid behaviour into a virtue. This was supplemented with the arrogance borne from being in government for 17-years, convincing many Tories that fresh thinking was a unnecessary luxury. Thatcherism was still their gold standard. 

In addition, much of the party’s funding comes from people who stand to benefit from this continuity. Hedge funds, private equity firms, and property developers prefer looser regulation, and rarely concern themselves about the social consequences of their working practices. They have been rewarded with housing market subsidies and plans to further deregulate finance, while the party continually neglects other businesses, such as the many SME’s being steadily choked by Brexit. 

Some of their fondness for Thatcherism owes much to selective memories; during the recession of the early 1980s, Thatcher allowed her chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, to raise taxes – the opposite of Truss’s promised approach. 

Sunak understands this, unfortunately his proposal of delaying tax cuts, which, allied to his raising of taxed during the pandemic, will cost him the leadership. 

Whilst Truss does have a history of occasional big U-turns, e.g. Brexit, her more enduring attitudes are exemplified by comments such as British workers needed to show ‘more graft.’ 

If voters can see how out-of-date her proposals are the Tory’s could suffer a heavy election defeat. 
 

‘her more enduring attitudes are exemplified by comments such as British workers needed to show ‘more graft.”

 
Labour now has an enormous opportunity. The public support for their proposed energy price cap shows a willingness to embrace new ways of doing things. Post the pandemic people are ready to listen to arguments for a better balance between public and private, between capital and labour, and between London and the rest of the country.  

Liz’s libertarianism, tax cuts for the better-off and an ‘aspiration nation‘, really are ‘so last year, darling!’  

I wish everyone an wonderful bank holiday weekend. To those of you visiting the coast you have my deepest sympathy. Remember, if it look like shit, smells like shit, it probably is! 
 

‘The sun is out and I want some 

It’s not hard, not far to reach 

We can hitch a ride 

To Rockaway Beach’ 

 
So, it’s happened, and millions will be facing a winter of despair; the energy price cap has been hoiked by 80%, with yet more misery to come.

The average family energy bill will now rise to £3459 from £1971; small businesses have no such cap and thousands are facing financial melt-own. Fish and chips shops apparently face an existential threat as the perfect storm of the rising price of fish, sunflower oil and energy, have pushed them to the brink.

If you expected the Downing St PR machine to kick in forget it; Boris has been in Kiev trying to upstage would-be Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat, and the rest of this shabby rabble are on their hollybobs.

It was left to Martin Lewis to do the rounds and declare, unequivocally, that we’re f**ked; people will lose their lives as a direct result of decisions being made, or rather not being made, at No10.

So what was Philip thinking?

‘A somewhat samo, samo piece this week. Why? Because nothing changes. The government has gone on holiday, albeit to beaches when you aren’t swimming in sewage, leaving us with crises and Liz and Rishi throwing around solutions like magicians. Most of which resemble what we swim in!

Their proposals are, in the main, samo, samo. The same Tory rubbish we have suffered for years. Whether or not Johnson believed in ‘levelling-up’ we will never know. What is certain is that it’s now dead!

Water is really a classic case for state ownership. Firms loaded with debt to pay dividends, disproportionately high rewards for CEO’s doing a shit job (there’s a theme here!). Businesses run for shareholders not customers, creaking infrastructure leading to water shortages and repellent ways of dealing with sewage.

It reminds me of the toxic waste scandal in the province of Naples when contracts were awarded to the Comorra who promptly dumped the stuff wherever, leading to an escalation in cancer cases. The difference being that the bad boys were the mob, not big business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples_waste_management_crisis

The sewage data is awful, embarrassing, and a scandal. What will happen? Nothing, people will tut, tut, the regulator is pointless, and the government is on the wrong side.

As the film said, ‘just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…’

Lyrically, I decided using the ‘Butt Hole Surfers’ was a bit too much! Instead we start with the Stranglers ‘Down in the Sewers’, and finish with the Ramones ‘Rockaway Beach’. Enjoy!

 
@coldwarsteve
 

 
Ah, what the heck; it’s a Bank Holiday weekend.
 

 
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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