Whether it’s your water supplier or the MP, you deserve to choose – Inside Croydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Households in the southern borough are about to see their water supplier taken over by the same firm responsible for supplying Devon with contaminated drinking water. What can they do about it? PETER UNDERWOOD, right, a candidate in the upcoming General Election, suggests exercising a real election at the polls.

Privatization was an absolute disaster.

Our public services are natural monopolies – meaning they are most efficient when run by a single company. We can’t choose which rail or bus company we travel with on our journey, and we can’t choose who supplies the water to the taps, but we all end up paying more for a poorer service, while private landlords make a fortune.

Its bottling: South West Water, coming to a pipe near you soon

Since privatization in 1989, it is estimated that the water companies have given £78 billion to their shareholders in dividends. At the same time they have run up £64bn of debt and not invested in providing the sewerage service we need because it is “not cost effective” for them.

Failure to properly regulate private companies has led them to dump sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches because it is more profitable for them to do so than modernizing our sewage treatment and disposal system.

There was a recent scandal where people in Devon were poisoned by sewer bugs in their drinking water.

Now the company that owns South West Water, which supplies Devon’s sewer bugs, has just been given permission to take over Sutton and East Surrey Water, the monopoly water suppliers to thousands of households in south Croydon and Sutton.

We had no choice in who took over our water supply, but we do have a choice in what comes next. The Green Party is the only major party in Croydon and Sutton which aims to put public services back into public hands. So if that’s what you want, make the most of your choice when you come to vote in the General Election on the 4th of July.

People have gone through the scam of the old political duopoly

One of the main arguments used in the 1980s and 1990s for privatizing our public services was that we needed “more choices”. If we had more choices, everything would be much better, we were told.

The argument for breaking up public services was that if we had a choice between, say, five companies, competition between them would force them all to improve their offering so that we all end up with a better service.

Rogue campaign: the London mayoral election never ended. Khan knew this

I have always wondered why the same argument is not used for choosing between political parties. If more options are good, why do the two largest parties insist on maintaining an electoral system that was designed to limit choices to just two options?

Why do we constantly hear Labor and the Tories saying that the election will be between them and that voting for anything else is a “wasted vote”? Why do we have so-called “tactical voting” guides telling people that the only way to get one of the major parties out is to vote for the other?

The answer comes in two parts.

The first is that keeping the whole system merged between Labor and Tory makes life easier for both. As we saw in the recent London election, the main message from the Tories was that voting for them was the only way to get Sadiq Khan out. Labour’s main message was that you had to vote for Sadiq Khan to keep Susan Hall out.

Sadiq Khan even made false claims that the election would be close to try to get even more people to vote for him or for Susan Hall.

No real effort has been made by any of these parties to set out a plan to make life better in London. The Tory and Labor candidates didn’t even bother to turn up to most of the debates where they could be questioned about their policies. Convincing you that you have no choice is easier for them than trying to convince you that they have the best policies.

The second reason Labor and the Tories are fighting so hard to tell you they are the only choice is because more and more of you have seen through their scam and are choosing to vote for someone else.

In the constituency ballot for Croydon and Sutton in the London election, where I was the Green Party candidate, the vote for both Labor and the Conservatives overall down. This overall figure hides more significant differences at a more local level.

We used to get a detailed breakdown of the vote so we could see how people voted in each council ward. That wasn’t done this year, but one of the advantages of being at the count is that you can still get a fair idea of ​​how people voted in each area.

Under pressure: the London election suggests Labor could struggle to unseat Tory MP Chris Philp

In Sutton, the Tory vote appeared to remain about the same. This was where the Liberal Democrats made the most gains. This could make it quite interesting in the upcoming general election in both Sutton contests and the question of what happens to the reform vote (which also made significant gains in Sutton) could decide the outcome.

In Croydon South, the only real Labor vs Conservative contest at local level, the London election vote seemed to support this, but the question remains whether Labor can do enough to overcome a Tory majority in this seat.

In Croydon West, the Labor vote appeared to fall only slightly, but the Tory vote appears to have fallen considerably. The increase in the Greens vote means they may have already overtaken the Conservatives and moved into second place. The same may be true of the new premises in Streatham and Croydon North.

In Croydon East, the Labor vote did not change much, but the Tory vote appears to have seen large falls in traditionally strong areas such as Selsdon, but also gains in New Addington. The Greens appear to have picked up votes from the other parties and closed the gap between them and both Labor and the Conservatives. There has also been an increase in the reform vote here and it remains to be seen what will happen to that when we come to the General Election.

So it seems that when it comes to politics, despite the best efforts of the two largest parties, voters are beginning to exercise their choice and choose other parties.

• Peter Underwood is the Green Party candidate for Croydon East in the July 4 general election

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• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s most rotten boroughs for the seventh consecutive year in the annual summary of civic advertising in Private magazine