Why privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

Dogmatic adherence to privatisation in the face of its sustained failure suggests ideology, not pragmatism, was the motivation.

It's the Economist, so they're not going to be pointing the fingers at the Tories for mixing corruption with idiocy, but even at the time we knew this was a terrible idea. Spitting Image at the time had Thatcher going "wouldn't you like the profits from an essential monopoly? I should hope so, too". Twenty years ago, we knew that Macquarie were plundering all of Thames Water's assets to bolster their stock - I worked there at the time, and the talk was all over the place. Did the government do fuck all? No, not even that much.

The Tories recognise that's there's a great deal of money in the NHS which could easily be in the pockets of their mates. We saw them at it with all the dodgy Covid contracts, and privatising the whole thing would make some of their buddies extremely wealthy. They need to be stopped.

Also just like the Economist to mix up 'Britain' with 'England and Wales', but both Scottish Water and Northern Ireland Water are still publicly owned, and are not having these problems. They recognised a bad idea when they saw one, and were not beholden to Tory ideology.

It’s been like that everywhere. Privatisation is a failed neoliberal fever dream. I’m Germany they privatised the rails and created the mess we’re in today.