Knowing a little history is one of those things that could be useful here:

The privatisation of public services is a 40-year failed experiment that voters have had enough of. Recent polling shows that 74% of potential Labour voters now support a greater commitment to public ownership. Evidence suggests that Labour’s public ownership policies were always popular with the general public, and became even more so from 2017 to 2019. Brexit and the party leadership were the stated factors that stopped people from voting Labour. Even Conservative voters support public ownership of railways and water utilities. That’s because in general, people want to see profits reinvested into better services rather than leaking out to shareholders.

To use just the example of the water utilities:

The water industry in England has been transformed since privatisation 30 years ago. It’s easy to forget how bad things were, so it’s worth reminding ourselves.

After decades of underinvestment by successive governments water quality was poor, rivers were polluted, and our beaches were badly affected by sewage. Quite simply, the water industry was not high up the list of priorities for Ministers when its funding came out of the same pot as the money for schools, hospitals and police officers.

Now we agree, something called “Water UK” might not be the most entirely unbiased source. But that basic claim is true. Precisely because any profits from the water industry - and by logical extension, other publicly owned utilities - went into the general revenue pot to then be spent according to political priorities not a great deal went into reinvestment in better services.

Investment in the water companies - the water and sewage systems - rose substantially after privatisation.

We do agree that it’s theoretically possible that government deciding upon investment levels can or could lead to the optimal amount of said investment. We also insist upon pointing out that that’s not what actually happened.

Which does lead to an interesting question, doesn’t it? How can renationalisation be the solution to the problem that privatisation solved itself? How to increase the investment in the utility systems?