“Yes, but with caveats” was the most respected sentence in the room, and it neatly captured a vote in which six in ten backed nationalising all UK utilities. The result was a mandate for public ownership, but not a blank cheque for ministers or unions.
The winning side’s strongest case was structural: these are “essential public services which function as a natural monopoly”, said one voter, and should serve the public rather than shareholders. Another insisted they must be provided “as a service not as a source of profit”, while the most-respected Yes argument warned against both union politicisation and unnecessary government interference.
The No side did not oppose every part of the proposition equally. Its best-rated voice could “agree with water” but said other utilities were better than when run by government, while another offered the blunt objection that “Government can't run a proverbial p*ss up in a brewery.” That was the central mismatch: Yes voters treated monopoly itself as the case for public ownership; No voters treated poor management and weak regulation as the real problem.
The wider argument was less about socialism than control, ownership and the cost of failure. Some voters saw foreign shareholders extracting value from infrastructure with no consumer choice; others argued that electricity and gas “privatisation has worked” and that bills reflected government policy, not ownership. Water’s financial distress gave the Yes case its sharpest example, but the vote extended that diagnosis across the whole sector.
The chamber voted to take the utilities back — cautiously, conditionally, and with far more anxiety about who would run them than enthusiasm for the state in the abstract.
50 Opinions
I would vote no if the taxpayer wasn’t bailing out the cost of failure but they are and will on things that are too important to let go to complete rack and ruin. Therefore apart from shareholders (and yes I know that includes pension funds but not just them) nobody really benefits
A conflict of interest exists where a monopoly is controlled privately, as profit comes before public interest
We wouldn’t have the energy crisis we have today if Thatcher hadn’t started the trend of selling off our utilities. Corporate greed is killing the UK.
Name the well run efficient part of the public sector? These industries were privatisated for a reason and anyone who worked in them at that time can tell you exactly why they were privatised and how much better they are now. Proper regulations and refroms of market are needed not blundering government
Just common sense for the utilities we depend on to be owned by us.
They have all had their chance and failed to keep the infrastructure and prices under control. Don’t seem to have an issue paying themselves offensively large bonuses for failing I notice.
Utilities were sold off by Tories under a protective regulatory regime favouring shareholders and lenders.
I could agree with water. Others are better now than when run by government. I know it doesn't seem so , majority are though. Railway is tethered by those that run tracks.
No But all dividends should be less and better regulations should be put in place to reduce the dividends so there is more money to spend on making the water systems work better, not passed on to the public. Dividends are ruining the water companies
Yes there should be full renationalisation of all utilities, in the short term problematic but in the long-term help relieve everyone in the cost of living crisis with lower energy bills.