England is a very special place. It is a place where it rains almost every day, yet we somehow run out of water. It is a place where we pay companies to take away our waste, and they decide to put it in our rivers instead. Most people would call this a disaster. But if you ask a man in a very expensive suit, he will tell you it is just a 'complex challenge.' The latest man to tell us this is Sir Jon Cunliffe. He is a former deputy governor of the Bank of England. The government asked him to look at our water system and find out why it is falling apart. His big conclusion? Privatization is not the problem. Also, the government taking control of the water is not the solution. In other words, everything is fine, even if it smells like a toilet outside your window.

It is hard not to admire the surgical precision of this kind of thinking. Sir Jon spent years at the Bank of England. He was there during the 2008 financial crisis. He is an expert in looking at a burning building and explaining that the fire is not actually the fault of the matches. He was hired by the new Labour government to write this report. They wanted him to look at the sewage scandal, the broken pipes, and the fact that people keep losing their tap water. His answer is a classic of the genre. He says there is no 'simple solution.' Whenever an intellectual tells you there is no simple solution, what they mean is, 'Stop asking me to fix it.'

For thirty years, we have been told that private companies are better at running things than the government. The theory was that if we let big companies own the water, they would use their smart business brains to make things better. Instead, they used their smart business brains to take out billions of pounds in loans. They gave that money to their shareholders. They left the pipes to rot. Now, the rivers are full of things that should stay in the bathroom. But Sir Jon says this isn't because of privatization. He says the system can work. It just needs better rules. We have been making 'better rules' for three decades. If rules worked, the Thames would be filled with sparkling wine by now instead of what is actually in there.

Then there is the warning about nationalization. This is the big bogeyman that the experts like to use to scare us. They tell us that if the government ran the water, it would be a mess. They say it would be slow and bureaucratic. It is a funny argument to make while the current private system is literally dumping filth into the sea. It’s like being in a sinking boat and refusing a life jacket because the jacket is the wrong shade of orange. Sir Jon thinks that changing who owns the water is too much work. It is much easier to just keep writing reports and hoping the sewage decides to stop flowing on its own.

This is the tragedy of the expert mind. They see the world as a giant spreadsheet. To them, the water industry isn't about people being able to have a clean bath. It is about 'regulatory frameworks' and 'capital investment cycles.' They are so busy looking at the math that they forget to look at the river. The Labour government brought him in because they want a safe pair of hands. A safe pair of hands is usually one that doesn't rock the boat. They want to show they are being 'responsible.' In politics, being responsible usually means making sure the rich people stay happy while the poor people keep paying for a service that doesn't work.

We are told to wait for the full report. We are told to be patient. But we already know what it will say. It will say we need more 'oversight.' It will say we need to 'align incentives.' It will use a lot of words that mean absolutely nothing to a family whose tap has run dry. The truth is that the system is working perfectly for the people who own it. They get the profit, and we get the pollution. Sir Jon Cunliffe has looked at this machine and decided that the machine is not broken. He thinks it just needs a bit of oil. But from where I am sitting, it looks like the machine was built to grind us down while we drown in our own mess. It is a beautiful piece of theater, really. We pay for the water, we pay for the mess, and then we pay for a banker to tell us that nobody is to blame.