Beyond financials, the crisis at Thames Water is a far more fundamental failure (Thames Water secures extra £750m from shareholders to help stave off nationalisation, 10 July). Privatisation was pitched in the 1980s as a solution to systemic weakness in public services and the wider British state, but instead we’re left with a business model so broken that it benefits neither economy nor society.
As costs rocket and quality plummets, polling routinely shows public support for nationalisation – but not every firm follows the same blueprint. Unlike Thames Water, Welsh Water runs a non-profit model solely benefiting the public, returning more than £440m in customer dividends and enjoying a much higher credit rating. Nationalisation dominates the debate, but we have other viable alternatives.
