Yet another demonstration of the devastating disaster of privatisation.

Having used privatised water as a milch-cow, the foreign owners now off-load Thames Water. Again, the privateers take the profits and the liabilities are handed over to the state.

THE CEO of Thames Water, having made millions from her previous job for Severn Trent, took £1.5 million a year from Thames. She made much of forfeiting her £0.5 million annual bonus in light of the company’s poor performance, but doubled her salary. We have yet to hear what golden handshake she will receive on her resignation from Thames and how many millions are in her pension pot.

The company’s apologies for the stupendous leakage problem (630 million litres a day) and turning the River Thames and its tributaries into an open sewer system are worthless. The company’s executives should be brought before the courts.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that a Tory government takes Thames Water and its liabilities into public ownership, while Kier Starmer, who proposed to take the utilities into public ownership when running for the Labour leadership, knowing it to have been one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most popular policies, has reneged on that idea, having “moved on”.

If there were an award for Self-seeking Pusillanimous Politician of the Year, Starmer would win it. He is hoping that persistent plain perfidy will be as successful for him as it has been for Boris Johnson.

At the General Election I hope the electorate see him for what he is, a power-hungry liar and scoundrel.