In classic English style, it was raining on the first day of the hosepipe ban in the Wiltshire market town of Marlborough. But this isn’t classic England any more. Residents are furious – and not just about the prospect of their yellowing lawns. Hosepipe bans used to cause a disgruntled ripple across the Tory shires. Today, they open the floodgates to a torrent of rage against environmental vandalism and corporate greed that makes the middle-aged of Middle England sound like radical socialists. “It goes far deeper now,” said one lifelong local. “The trust is broken.”
Why, residents ask, should we save water when the water companies have been frittering our money away? With sewage in the local River Kennet, rising water bills (the same local produces a letter informing him his water bill is going up £19 a month), and flooding in the town centre earlier this year, Thames Water is a dirty word in this once clean and pleasant land. I’m told children in some local schools have even been asked to bring in a spare pair of shoes – one pair to walk through the sewage-splattered ground outside, and another for indoors. The golf club put their own water tank in two years ago, bypassing a reliance on Thames Water.
“There’s definitely been a change in mood,” says Charlotte Hitchmough, 56, who has been campaigning against sewage overflows in the River Kennet for two decades. “It’s a critical part of living here – the river defines the landscape, and because the water’s quite mobile it’s really different month-to-month: people here talk about the river like they talk about the weather.”
A new government plan to streamline and strengthen regulation of the water industry hasn’t quelled the anger. Locals I hear from feel they’ve been lumped with Thames Water’s debt and believe “they’re cruising around the world on superyachts”. The proposed changes also don’t cover the consequences of road run-off into rivers, which is environmentally damaging and visibly so. “You can see the river change colour,” says Hitchmough. “That’s probably going to get worse, not better – it’s the next big, scary thing.”
Having started her career as a consultant for the newly privatised water industry, she now – like some other fellow residents – sees greater state oversight as the answer. “Profit shouldn’t be part of it because, fundamentally, water is not a resource that belongs to anyone. Water is a source that none of us can live without. It was like privatising air.”
It should no longer come as a surprise that even in Marlborough – whose constituencies have never been anything but Conservative for a century – you hear support for renationalisation and the conclusion, as worded by one local: “I blame Maggie!”
This year, the Lib Dems and independent councillors took control of Wiltshire Council from the Conservatives. From seats in the south-west to the Blue Wall (where affluent commuter-belt and suburban seats are turning away from the Conservatives), voters are deeply concerned about the sewage spills, suggest new focus groups and polling released in May by More in Common, a research agency specialising in public attitudes towards politics and policy.
Sixty-one per cent of those polled say reducing sewage pollution should be the government’s highest priority or a high priority. They still just about blame the Tories: half of voters say the previous Conservative government did a bad job on tackling sewage pollution, and 43 per cent say the same of the current Labour administration.
Pollution of rivers and seas was a particularly motivating issue for people who voted Lib Dem in 2024. Asked for the top reasons why they voted for the party last July, more than one third (34 per cent) chose at least one environmental reason – the most popular being the party’s campaign against sewage pollution.
Local Lib Dem leaflets accusing Tory MPs of voting to pump sewage into their constituency rivers still haunt the Conservative Party – blamed in part for electoral losses in their former heartlands in the south.
But it’s not just Lib Dem/Tory marginals. Even Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a policy to take half the industry back into public ownership. “In focus groups from Worthing to Clacton to Ilford North, people were bringing up sewage last year in the run-up to the election and in some since,” revealed Luke Tryl of More in Common. “You get this with every type of voter, because it’s such a visible example of state failure – it is up there with failing to stop the boats, because people can’t understand why government is allowing it to happen and isn’t able to stop it. That’s what makes it such a potent force.”
For years, polling has indicated growing public appetite for state intervention and left-economic solutions – a trend exacerbated by the pandemic. Voters of every party support more regulation of water companies, for example, and a majority feels water should be publicly owned. While these sentiments may have benefited Labour in opposition, they aren’t necessarily good news for the party in government as it pursues cautious, incremental fixes to broken bits of the state.
Whether you were a Conservative voter fearing a Labour government, or a supporter who backed it, you see Labour as the party most likely to stick it to bonus-hungry executives and asset-stripping investors. Ministers’ arguments about fiscal rectitude and balancing books fail to resonate because they “go against the grain” of the party’s traditional brand, according to one polling analyst.
All the while, voters watch dirty rivers wriggling through their towns and grow impatient for change. If Labour’s plan to regulate water better doesn’t bring tangible results before the next election, the confused politics of England will – like its weather – become less and less predictable.
Thames Water has been contacted for comment.
[See also: Who is accountable in privatised Britain?]
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