Natural monopolies for essential services should not be privately owned. You can’t allow shareholders to take dividends while essential infrastructure rots, and it makes no sense for us all to be paying dividends to idle shareholders when we have no choice but to pay for the service they (are supposed to) provide.

Steve Reed, Labour’s shadow environment secretary pledged to “for the water companies to clean up their filth” through instant fines and more responsibility for bosses – but stopped short of calling for the industry’s nationalisation.

Of course he did. Power is so concentrated in so few hands, there isn’t even an option on the ballot paper to stop this nonsense.