THE Thames Water calamity continues, uniting tragedy and farce in a way even Marx could scarcely have anticipated.

The company is effectively bankrupt, although still solvent enough to hand its incompetent executives lucrative bonuses.

Now New York private equity speculators KKR have pulled out of their bid to “rescue” the utility, the only option left appears to be a deal with Thames’ creditors.

Their demand for keeping the indebted, polluting and exploitative company afloat appears to be the capacity to break the law and ignore the regulator with impunity.

Essentially, they are trying to extort the public into turning a blind eye to its many offences, already attracting record fines, in return for investing in the company.

Any reasonable person will have asked why the government has not taken Thames into public ownership by now.

The answer tells us a lot about Keir Starmer’s principles and priorities. Nationalising Thames, if not the entire water industry, would be wildly popular. It would also show the government to be “getting a grip,” a pose the premier likes to strike on other issues.

Yet Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are determined to avoid even a temporary public ownership. It is their three reasons which are so revealing.

First, they claim it would cost too much at a time of stringency. Yet it has been cogently argued, by Common Wealth and others, that Thames is effectively worthless and could be taken into the public sector for more-or-less nothing.

From a government ready to spend billions upon billions on “defending Britain” and its sewage-filled shores and rivers from non-existent threats, this reason cannot be taken seriously. Yet Treasury logic defeats reason.

Second, they believe that any public ownership of any utility would send the wrong message to international investors. This exposes the subservience to global capital and its priorities dominating in Downing Street.

It also allows finance capital to blackmail any government — however badly we behave, they intimate, however much we destroy public services, you dare not touch us because we will take our ball, and our cash, away.

Third, ministers apparently fear that any concession on public ownership will embolden the left in the Labour Party itself. And, indeed, it is likely that any action taken to rescue Thames will lead to wider calls for the whole industry to be restored to the public sector.

Nationalising water and energy utilities was, after all, Labour policy for years and formed one of Starmer’s own 10 pledges in his fraudulent prospectus to grab the party leadership in 2020.

Taken together, the Starmer-Reeves rationalisation for letting Thames’ agony drag on speaks to their subservience to capital and their fear of any whisper of socialism.

Stinking streams, broken pipes and soaring bills are the price the public must pay for Labour’s capitulation to the interests of the capitalist class.

Trump leaves Lib Dems the only party with spine

It is a bizarre fact that the Liberal Democrats have one major political opening entirely to themselves. They are the only large party willing to criticise President Trump, despite his deep unpopularity among British voters.

The Labour government is afraid of the demagogue in the White House and wants to keep him onside to prolong the Ukraine war and cut a trade deal. The Tories (and Reform) admire him and seek to ape his politics.

So, as the smoke hangs over Los Angeles and the US lurches daily towards a form of populist authoritarianism, only the Liberal Democrats are heard to criticise the president.

The Labour left should volubly shatter this monopoly and speak up for democracy and decency, even if it angers Trump and alarms the supine Starmer.