I personally don’t care very much if an industry is privatised or not, but with one key caveat. If the privatised industry is a monopoly or even market dominant it has to be regulated to death.
The industry will lawyer up at every chance, game the system, lobby the government, hide its profits and overpay its owners and managers, unless it is regulated until the pips squeeze.
That is just not happening in the UK, the water industry is the worst example but there are plenty of others. BT is still dominant in telecoms, there is too little competition in energy, the railways are a total mess.
Yet, analysis from the FT found that private sewage and water companies paid out £1.4b in dividends last year, up sharply from £540m in 2021, despite an outcry over the sewage crisis.
This is just shameless and to then claim that if we want fresh water and clean beaches we will have to pay more, is adding insult to injury. The water industry is already paid to do that, it is just getting away with not doing its job properly because the regulators have been captured by the industry they regulate.
Any new government should fire the regulators, recruit some tough replacements, properly fund them and ensure they are banned from ever working for the industry they are in charge of.
You then have to set very, very tough targets for standards, service and if necessary the wages and dividends payable. If not re-nationalise.
At least then politicians can be held to account, because no one is now.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Privatised public services is surely an oxymoron. The profits are private while the debts are underwritten by the tax paying public. And if they must be regulated to make them conform to public service priorities (e.g. service before profit), which adds another layer of bureaucracy and expense, then they might as well not be privatised in the first place.
The only reason for privatising public services is to exploit a captive audience for profit. Every other reason for privatisation, such as economy, efficiency and professionalism, is a lie. In the real world of private enterprise, businesses fail all the time. But public services cannot be allowed to fail, because they are not really businesses.
The UK water industry falls into the Feymanesque category of "Cargo Cult". It looks like a public service and a business, but it is neither. It's just a profit making scam.