How Scotland dodged the water privatisation bullet

A popular referendum ensured that the People's Will prevailed

Spot the difference?

Published in The National, May 1, 2024 and The Edinburgh Evening News on May 2nd.

It’s been reported that the collapse of the privatised and heavily indebted Thames Water could trigger a government borrowing crisis. Nonsense. The $15 billion debt is a drop in the bucket, and since the shares are valueless, the UK government won’t pony up the whole amount anyway. Also recall that Sunak blithely announced the annual defence budget will jump from £55 billion to £87 billion by 2030. That tells you the UK values bombs over clean water. 

It’s doubtful the UK government will learn the key lesson from this debacle - that water, an essential public good, should have never been privatised in the first place. [Fun fact: England is the only nation on the planet that has fully privatised its water supply.]

And don’t expect common sense from English Labour. Its solution is to ban bonuses for water bosses, not to bring England’s filthy and costly water back into public ownership. Yeah, that should clean things up!

So how did Scotland dodge, for now at least, this particular privatisation bullet? It did it via a popular referendum, a basic political right under a system of direct democracy.  

When the Tory government proposed privatising Scotland’s water in 1994, which 90% of Scots opposed, Strathclyde Regional Council organized a postal referendum asking them if they agreed with the UK government’s proposal. 71.5% of all voters - 1.2 million people - took part. 97.2% voted NO in the UK’s largest ever council referendum. Westminster backed down and Scotland’s water remained in public hands. 

The Strathclyde water referendum showed that if the People are given a voice, their will can prevail and serve as a check on government power (and they can enjoy cleaner and cheaper water!).

Scotland’s constitution, embodied in the 1689 Claim of Right, says the People are sovereign and Westminster has agreed. So, the way out of this failing union is for the Scottish People, not the hapless politicians, to convene a Constitutional Convention to draft a modern constitution based on Direct Democracy, putting themselves back in charge of their nation.