The Guardian view on privatisation: the god that failed

theguardian.com:

Three ghastly faces of the UK’s privatised economy have been on show this week. On Wednesday, the energy regulator, Ofgem, was judged guilty of adding £2.7bn to household bills because it was so keen to create a competitive energy market that it did not properly check the slew of shaky outfits setting up as suppliers. Now that 28 providers have collapsed, such light-touch regulation is producing costly chaos – not only for customers of Bulb and the others, but for everyone, because we will all foot the bill.

Earlier, Anglian Water announced that it would pay a £92m dividend to investors, despite the Environment Agency fining it for water pollution on three separate occasions in the past few months. And in the story of the week, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, ducked out of talks with the rail unions, claiming it wasn’t his responsibility to negotiate. Yet the government not only owns the company that owns the tracks, tunnels and signals, but is also the paymaster for all the train operators.

These are three stories of privatisation provoking market breakdown, providing rewards for failure, and serving as the thinnest of veils for what is ultimately a publicly run system. This was not what the British were promised when ministers flogged off the family silver. During the tenures of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the government went on a selling spree unmatched by any other industrialised economy. Telecoms, gas, electricity, water, airlines and trains: they were all bundled up and sold off. Other public goods were surrendered too, often for a song – the biggest example being nearly 2m council homes.

Each time voters were assured that privatisation would mean great services, savings for the government and an