In the damp, decaying corner of the world known as the United Kingdom, we are once again treated to the spectacle of the ruling class pretending to discover that things are broken. Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds has descended from the high heavens of Whitehall to inform us that the boss of South East Water should, perhaps, not receive a bonus. This is the kind of staggering, galaxy-brained insight that only a career politician could deliver with a straight face. It is a masterclass in the performative art of stating the blindingly obvious while ensuring that absolutely nothing of substance actually changes. The water is brown, the pipes are screaming, and the government’s response is to wag a finger at a man whose bank account is already fortified against the coming collapse of civilization.

South East Water has been officially crowned as the poorest performer in the industry, a feat that requires a special kind of dedicated incompetence. In a country that is essentially a large, wet rock surrounded by more water, we have somehow managed to create a system where the simple act of moving liquid from point A to point B is treated as an unsolvable differential equation. The company has failed on nearly every metric—leaks, supply interruptions, customer service—yet we are still having a public debate about whether the man at the helm deserves an extra pile of cash for his efforts. It’s like tipping a waiter who not only dropped your soup but proceeded to kick you in the shins and set your napkin on fire. The fact that 'no bonus' is a headline rather than a biological certainty tells you everything you need to know about the terminal state of British capitalism.

But let us not lay all the blame at the feet of the water barons. They are merely doing what parasites do: they find a host and they drain it. The real comedy lies in the reaction of the political establishment. Reynolds, representing the latest iteration of the 'sensible' Left, is engaging in the time-honored tradition of the stern rebuke. It is the political equivalent of a wet noodle slap. By saying he 'should not' get a bonus, she neatly avoids the messy business of actually regulating the industry or, God forbid, addressing the foundational rot of privatization. It is theater for the masses who are currently wading through their own effluent. It allows the government to look tough without actually disrupting the flow of capital that keeps the whole circus running. They don’t want to fix the pipes; they just want to make sure the man holding the wrench looks sufficiently ashamed while he robs you.

The Right, of course, will mutter about the sanctity of contracts and the need to attract 'top talent.' If this is what 'top talent' looks like—a system that fails to provide the basic necessity of life while charging a premium for the privilege—then perhaps we should try hiring a moderately intelligent golden retriever instead. The talent in question isn't in water management; it’s in the extraction of dividends from a crumbling infrastructure. We are told that privatization brings efficiency, yet the only thing being efficiently produced here is sewage and shareholder value. The public, trapped in a geographic monopoly, has the 'choice' of paying South East Water or simply dying of thirst. It’s a wonderful business model if you can get it, and a horrifying one if you’re the one trying to have a shower.

Historical parallels are almost too depressing to draw. We have returned to a Victorian state of affairs, minus the architectural ambition and plus a lot more plastic. The Victorian engineers at least had the decency to build things that lasted a century; our modern technocrats can barely keep a tap running for a weekend without a crisis meeting at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We are living through the logical conclusion of forty years of ideological suicide, where we sold off the literal lifeblood of the nation to anyone with a briefcase and a lack of a moral compass. Now, we act surprised when the people who bought it don't care about the water, only the pipes' capacity to carry money away from the plebeians.

In the end, whether the South East Water boss gets his bonus is irrelevant. The money is gone, the water is leaking into the soil, and the politicians are busy polishing their soundbites for the evening news. We are a society that has forgotten how to build, how to maintain, and how to hold anyone truly accountable. We prefer the comfortable ritual of the public shaming, a brief moment of cathartic outrage before we return to our regularly scheduled programming of decline. Emma Reynolds can say whatever she likes to the cameras, but until the pipes are fixed and the profit motive is removed from the basic requirements of human survival, we are all just treading water in a pool of our own making. And given the state of the industry, that pool is likely contaminated.