How can England possibly be running out of water?

Conservatives have generally been at least somewhat pro-market. American Republicans haven't been fiscally responsible, but until Trump they were meaningfully more pro-market than the alternative. Trump's economic views have at least as much in common with Bernie Sanders (as Bernie keeps pointing out!) as with pre-Trump Republicans.

> If an election were called tomorrow [...] Reform with a massive majority [...] 33% of the vote

(Just remarking in passing on what a terrible electoral system we have in the UK. But, also, precisely because we have this terrible system, it is likely that a lot of the 67% who would prefer Reform not to win would, if there were actually an election tomorrow, vote for parties other than their first preference in the hope of keeping them out. Voters who don't like Reform often really don't like Reform.)

> that's a third of the country saying through their votes they think the Conservatives are a center-left party

Assuming for the sake of argument that it's actually true that 1/3 of voters would vote Reform if there were an election tomorrow (polled voting intentions far away from actual election dates aren't super-reliable) and that all those people agree with Reform about everything, that's 1/3 of the country who are to the right of the Conservatives.

That is not the same thing as 1/3 of the country thinking that the Conservatives are a centre-left party.

(There are plenty of people to the left of the Labour Party but wouldn't call them a centre-right party.)

Also, by your own numbers, we have: 33% to the right of the Conservatives; 17% to the left of the Conservatives; 60% voting for other parties, mostly the Lib Dems and Greens who are also to the left of the Conservatives, typically followed by the SNP and Plaid Cymru, also to the left of the Conservatives, and a few percent of random others most of whom are also to the left of the Conservatives.

A party that is to the right of (let's say) 55% of the electorate is not in any useful sense a centre-left party.

> Labour's support for far-left ideology is so intense they're reacting to continuously dropping approval numbers by doubling down

This is laughably different from anything that is actually happening. For instance:

> They'd rather drive their own party into the ground than compromise on modern left wing goals like unlimited mass immigration

Here is an instance from each of the last five months of the Labour Party demonstrating, or at least claiming, that it does not want unlimited mass immigration.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wgrv7pwrzo "Sir Keir Starmer has promised the government's new immigration measures will mean net migration falls "significantly" over the next four years." and https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-immig... "Sir Keir Starmer unveiled drastic plans to slash migration on Monday (May 2025; these are about the same white paper)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-small... "Sir Keir Starmer has signalled a new hardline approach to tackling illegal immigration by limiting visas for countries which did not do enough to tackle the irregular migration crisis, like taking back failed asylum seekers." (June 2025)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/10/starmer-and-... "Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron will announce a “one in, one out” migration deal on Thursday that will involve the UK accepting some cross-Channel asylum seekers but returning others to France." (July 2025)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/04/starmer-hires-of... "Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a £100 million investment in border security which will pay for the NCA to get an additional 300 officers to work on organised immigration crime." (August 2025)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y5379djl3o "Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed for the first time the government is looking at digital ID as a way to tackle illegal immigration." (September 2025)

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that these are all things that would please or satisfy your, or the typical Reform voter's, preferences around immigration. I am sure it is true that the Labour Party is less opposed to immigration than you would like it to be. But it is flatly untrue that they would do anything rather than compromise on unlimited mass immigration; if they want unlimited mass immigration at all (which all the evidence suggests they don't) they are compromising on it rather a lot. In other words, doing exactly what you say centrists do and far-leftists don't do.

Sure thing!

According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgleg70r7rno

> When Thames was privatised in 1989, it had no debt. But over the years it borrowed heavily and its total debt - which includes all of its borrowings and liabilities - now stands at £22.8bn, according to latest financial results, external.

> Its debt pile increased sharply when Macquarie, an Australian infrastructure bank, owned Thames Water, with debts reaching more than £10bn by the time the company was sold in 2017.

According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41152516

> Macquarie and its investors paid £5.1bn for Thames Water, of which £2.8bn was money Macquarie had borrowed [...] £2bn had subsequently been repaid. Not by Macquarie and its investors, who had originally borrowed the money, but from new borrowings raised by Thames Water through a Cayman Islands subsidiary.

> Martin Blaiklock said: "That letter was a red flag to me because it showed clearly that the debt which Macquarie funds had used to buy Thames Water had been transferred over to Thames Water." [...]

> the total returns made by the bank and its investors from Thames Water averaged between 15.5% and 19% a year. Mr Blaiklock has 40 years of experience in such matters and said these returns were "twice what one would normally expect"

According to https://news.sky.com/story/approval-for-higher-bills-and-loa...

> The company, which has been crumbling under a £16bn debt pile, was due to run out of money in about a month's time. It has now received court approval for another £3bn loan [...] the company's gearing ratio is 80% and its annual debt interest bill is around £900m (about a third of the revenue it gets from customer bills) [...]

> The water regulator has sanctioned bill increases of 35% by 2030.

> However, Thames wants more. It is seeking a 53% increase, which would take the average bill to £677 a year

This stuff's all pretty widely documented and reported, if your idea of fun is getting angry and depressed while also reading about business accounting.

You could flush a toilet with salt water, the problem is you’d have to pump it all the way from the sea. That’s the expensive part.

The AfD has nothing in common with the Nazis.