Despite the huffing of ideologues, the world has moved on. Voters and businesses are calling more effective protections
As the sewage-filled waters start to close over the heads of Torydom, their Tufton Street thinktankers carry on like the orchestra on the Titanic. In three grand Westminster houses dwell the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the anti-migration Migration Watch UK, the climate crisis-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, the anti-EU European Foundation, the Margaret Thatcher-founded Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and others, all very opaque about their sources of funding. Now they sink together, still playing the old songs painfully out of tune with the country of which they seem to know nothing.
I went to watch them on Wednesday in one of their lavish salons, as the CPS launched a report calling yet again for more state-shrinking deregulation. I waited until the very end, but no, there was not one line, not one mention in their report of the great regulatory failures of our time. Not a word about Ofwat letting water companies pour sewage into rivers and seas. Nothing about all the other failed regulators – rail, mail, buses, energy, environment, broadcasting and the rest.
