When Patriotism Needs an Enemy: Britain Should Remember Where This Road Can Lead

by David Palethorpe

There is nothing shameful about loving your country.

There is nothing unreasonable about wanting secure borders.

There is nothing extremist about believing immigration should be controlled, that asylum claims should be decided quickly, that people with no legal right to remain should ordinarily be removed, or that governments have a responsibility to consider the effects of rapid population change on housing, wages, public services and communities.

Those are legitimate political arguments.

But something different is happening when immigration ceases to be a question of policy and becomes a story about who really belongs.

That distinction matters.

Britain is again hearing the vocabulary of national emergency, invasion, betrayal and restoration.

Reform UK has described the Channel situation as a “national emergency”; its own material has used the language of Britain being “invaded” and promises what it calls the largest mass-deportation operation in modern British history.

Restore Britain states that mass immigration has damaged the country and proposes removing some legally resident foreign nationals as well as making citizenship harder to obtain. (Reform UK⁠)

These positions should be debated on what they actually say—not caricatured but not sanitised either.

And Britain should be particularly careful about the political transformation that occurs when human beings become an undifferentiated threatening mass.

A border is a policy.

A human being is not.

The latest Home Office statistics provide a useful corrective to political theatre.

In the year ending June 2026, about 38,000 people were detected arriving through illegal entry routes, including approximately 33,000 by small boat.

About 86,000 people claimed asylum during that year.

Just over half of asylum seekers had arrived through illegal routes, while 41% had previously held a visa or other permission to be in Britain.

Britain ranked fifth among EU+ countries for the absolute number of asylum applicants in the comparable period—but sixteenth when measured per head of population. (GOV.UK⁠)

Those figures do not tell us what immigration policy ought to be.

They do something more elementary.

They tell us what we are actually talking about.

A democracy is perfectly entitled to decide who may enter its territory.

It can reduce immigration.

It can increase enforcement.

It can remove people whose claims have failed, subject to its laws and obligations.

Citizens can peacefully protest against immigration policy; indeed, a parliamentary motion sponsored by Restore leader Rupert Lowe explicitly frames such protest as a democratic right. (Early Day Motions⁠)

But none of those propositions requires us to transform migrants collectively into an invading force.

That is a political choice of language.

And history teaches us to pay attention to language.

The dangerous word is “they”

Nationalism becomes most combustible when complicated social problems acquire a wonderfully simple explanation:

“They did this to us”.

Housing shortage?

“Them”.

Pressure on the NHS?

“Them”.

Crime?

“Them”.

Low wages?

“Them”.

A changing high street, unfamiliar languages, cultural anxiety, national decline?

“Them”.

It is politically intoxicating because it turns structural problems into human enemies.

Britain has a housing shortage created over decades.

Britain has struggled with productivity, regional inequality, social-care capacity, infrastructure and public-service provision.

Governments have repeatedly made choices about migration while failing adequately to plan for its consequences.

Immigration interacts with those problems.

Pretending otherwise would be foolish.

But reducing them all to the presence of foreigners is equally foolish.

And once politics starts dividing society into an authentic national “us” and a suspect foreign “them”, the argument is no longer merely about how many visas should be issued next year.

It becomes an argument about belonging.

That deserves scrutiny whichever party uses it.

We have seen the machinery before

Europe does not lack experience of ethnic nationalism.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip in 1914 occurred within a combustible landscape of Serbian and South Slav nationalism, imperial rivalry, militarism and competing alliances.

It would be absurd to claim nationalism alone caused the First World War.

It would be equally absurd to pretend nationalist movements played no part in the Europe that exploded.

The lesson of the twentieth century is not that every patriot becomes a fascist.

That is historically illiterate.

The lesson is that nationalism possesses an extraordinarily powerful political mechanism: it can persuade ordinary people that strangers who share their nationality matter more than neighbours who do not.

At low temperature that can mean flags, football, ceremonies and affection for home.

At higher temperature it can mean exclusion.

At still higher temperature it can become the belief that the nation is being contaminated, replaced, invaded or betrayed from within.

Europe knows where that vocabulary can lead.

Yugoslavia knows.

Rwanda knows.

India and Pakistan know what happens when identity, territory and fear become fused.

None of this means Britain in 2026 is Nazi Germany, Rwanda in 1994 or Yugoslavia in 1992.

Such comparisons, casually made, illuminate nothing.

History does not repeat itself by photocopy.

What history gives us instead are warning mechanisms.

One of them is the deliberate conversion of individual human beings into a threatening category.

The politics of “invasion”

Words deserve particular attention because they shape the problem before policy has even begun.

Reform’s Zia Yusuf has described Britain as being “invaded” and called a proposed migrant accommodation site “ground zero for the invasion of Britain”.

Reform proposes using the Royal Navy to intercept unauthorised Channel crossings and return those aboard.

Nigel Farage has separately described masked protesters involved in recent demonstrations as “horrible”, illustrating that Reform itself contains arguments about where legitimate anti-immigration politics ends and harder nationalist activism begins. (Reform UK⁠)

Restore Britain occupies different territory again.

Its published immigration policy does not limit proposed removal to illegal entrants.

It identifies circumstances in which legally resident foreign nationals could also be deported and concludes: “If that means millions go, then millions go.” (Restore Britain⁠)

People should read these policies themselves.

They should also ask difficult questions.

What precisely constitutes failure to “integrate”?

Who decides?

What protections exist against arbitrary decisions?

What happens to families containing British citizens and foreign nationals?

How should long-term residents be treated?

Where does enforcement of immigration law end and an ideological project to alter the ethnic or cultural composition of the country begin?

Those questions are not an attempt to silence debate.

They are the debate.

Patriotism does not require amnesia

Britain’s national story has never been ethnically pure.

The Romans came.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes came.

Vikings came.

Normans came.

Huguenots came.

Jews fleeing persecution came., – and returned after they had been expelled.

Irish people came.

Caribbean families came.

Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Africans, Poles, Ukrainians and countless others came.

Some arrived freely.

Some arrived through the violent machinery of empire.

Some were invited because Britain needed workers.

Some fled persecution.

Some came because British power had helped create a world in which London sat at the centre of enormous networks of trade, government, war and migration.

They did not erase Britain.

They became part of Britain.

That does not mean unlimited immigration is desirable.

It does not answer whether net migration should be 50,000 or 500,000.

It does not tell us what the asylum rules should be.

It establishes something simpler:

Britishness has never been a sealed biological inheritance.

The test of patriotism

Perhaps patriotism should be measured less by the size of the flag than by what someone believes the flag represents.

If Britain means parliamentary democracy, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, peaceful disagreement and the dignity of the individual, those principles become most important when applying them is inconvenient.

A principle that protects only people we like is not much of a principle.

And there is another uncomfortable truth.

Nobody chooses where they are born.

Move the cradle a few hundred miles and the anthem changes.

Move it several thousand and perhaps the religion, language and passport change too.

Yet every nation teaches its children that their particular accident of geography carries profound significance.

Perhaps it does.

Home matters.

Language matters.

Shared memory matters.

Community matters.

But the accident of birthplace cannot tell us the value of the person standing in front of us.

That must be the line Britain refuses to cross.

Control the border if voters demand controlled borders.

Debate immigration numbers.

Enforce democratically enacted law.

Demand competent government.

Prosecute criminals regardless of nationality.

Remove people who have no lawful entitlement to remain where the law provides for removal.

But never confuse administration with human worth.

Never allow “illegal” to become a description of someone’s humanity rather than their immigration status or manner of entry.

And be suspicious whenever politicians need an entire category of people to explain why the country is failing.

Because history’s most dangerous political sentence rarely begins:

“I have a complicated policy proposal.”

It begins:

“Your problems are because of those people.”

A confident Britain should be capable of something better.

It should be capable of controlling its borders without surrendering its humanity; of discussing immigration without pretending every concern is hatred; and of challenging hatred without pretending every concern is illegitimate.

Most importantly, it should understand that patriotism does not have to mean narrowing the circle of people whose lives matter.

A country is not made stronger by discovering more people to fear.

The question facing Britain is therefore larger than immigration.

It is what kind of patriotism Britain wants to practise: one defined principally by ancestry and exclusion, or one rooted in institutions, citizenship, obligations and a shared civic life.

That argument belongs to the British people.

But history gives them every reason to examine the language, the policies and the consequences with their eyes wide open.

The Great Town-Centre Parking Conundrum

by David Palethorpe

There are certain subjects guaranteed to produce an animated discussion at almost any council meeting.

Planning.

Potholes.

Bin collections.

And, of course, parking.

Mention parking and perfectly reasonable people who have just spent the previous two hours agreeing on absolutely everything can suddenly look at each other as though they are about to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Because apparently, when it comes to the future of our town centres, there is one thing we can all agree on:

We want them to be exactly as they were 40 years ago.

And we want to drive there.

And park for free.

And preferably park immediately outside the shop.

And we would quite like some nice trees while we’re at it.

This is where things become interesting.

Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the town centre we remember from 40 or 50 years ago wasn’t quite the town centre, we think it was.

The memories, of course, are genuine.

There was the bustling marketplace.

The busy High Street.

The independent butcher.

The greengrocer.

The post office.

The little shops where somebody knew your name and probably knew your business as well.

There were national retailers alongside independent businesses.

There were people everywhere.

It was, in the terminology of modern town-centre strategy documents, “vibrant”.

Nobody needed to write a strategy document to tell them.

They simply went into town.

And, for many people, they went by bus.

That bit is rather important.

Because the town centre of 50 years ago was built around a very different pattern of life.

Car ownership was lower.

Public transport was more widely used.

Bus services were more frequent in many places.

And if you went shopping, you didn’t necessarily expect to put the entire contents of the High Street into the boot of your car.

Indeed, if you are of a certain age, you will remember being dragged into town by your mother and then spending the journey home carrying shopping bags while wondering why your parents had decided that this particular Saturday afternoon was necessary.

Then things changed.

We became more affluent.

We bought cars.

Lots of cars.

And why wouldn’t we?

The motor car gave people freedom.

It made life easier.

It allowed families to travel further.

It allowed people to carry more shopping.

It allowed us to live further from where we worked.

And slowly but surely, we redesigned our towns around it.

Now, several decades later, we are standing in the middle of the consequences and wondering what on earth happened to the High Street.

And our proposed solution appears to be:

More parking.

Free parking.

Lots of it.

Preferably everywhere.

There is, however, a small contradiction here.

If the problem is that our town centres have too many cars, then adding more parking isn’t necessarily the most revolutionary solution ever conceived.

And if we want to reduce congestion, encouraging more people to drive into town may not be entirely helpful.

But the argument for free parking is remarkably persistent.

Businesses understandably say that parking charges discourage customers.

Some residents say the same.

Politicians hear it.

Councillors hear it.

And because nobody wants to be the person who says, “Actually, perhaps we shouldn’t make the parking free,” it becomes rather tempting to nod sympathetically and move on.

But let’s take the argument to its logical conclusion.

Suppose parking costs £3 for two hours.

You are going into town to meet a friend for coffee.

The coffee costs £4.50.

The cake costs £4.

Parking costs £3.

Are you really going to cancel?

“Sorry, Sandra. I was looking forward to seeing you, but the council has charged me £3 to park. I’ll see you next month.”

Or perhaps you’re going out for lunch.

You are going to spend £15, £20 or £25 per person.

But then you discover that parking costs £3.

“Right. That’s it. Back home. We’ll have beans on toast.”

I don’t think so.

Of course parking charges can influence behaviour.

Of course people notice them.

And of course businesses are entitled to be concerned about anything that might discourage customers.

But it is worth asking whether parking is really the great villain we have decided it is.

Because there is another rather inconvenient truth.

Car parking charges generate income for councils.

And councils have bills.

Quite a lot of them.

The money doesn’t disappear into a mysterious vault beneath the town hall where council officers spend their evenings swimming through piles of pound coins.

It contributes to the wider finances of local government.

And that money helps support services.

Homelessness services.

Support for vulnerable residents.

Planning.

Community transport.

Citizens Advice.

Disability access grants.

Leisure services.

Waste collection.

A whole range of things that people tend to regard as extremely important right up until somebody suggests that paying for parking might help fund them.

Then suddenly the parking charge becomes an outrage.

There is also the small matter of public transport.

For decades, we have gradually allowed bus services to become less attractive, less frequent and, in many places, less viable.

And then we wonder why everyone gets in the car.

It isn’t exactly a mystery.

If the bus takes forever, doesn’t turn up when you need it, costs a fortune and involves standing in the rain for 25 minutes, while your car is sitting on the driveway, then the car is going to look remarkably attractive.

And when more people use cars, congestion increases.

When congestion increases, buses get slower.

When buses get slower, people use them less.

When fewer people use them, services become less viable.

And services are reduced.

And around we go again.

It’s a magnificent little vicious circle.

And then we complain that nobody uses the bus.

There is another issue which fascinates me.

Green space.

Everyone loves green space.

Nobody has ever attended a public meeting and shouted:

“I’m absolutely furious. There are too many trees.”

Trees are popular.

Benches are popular.

Flowers are popular.

Nice places to sit are popular.

So when someone says that we need to make our town centres greener, it sounds entirely sensible.

But where are we going to put the green?

Because, unless we are proposing to demolish half the High Street, we aren’t going to be planting trees where shops currently stand.

Many of those buildings are privately owned anyway.

And businesses need servicing.

Goods have to arrive.

Deliveries have to be made.

Stock doesn’t simply teleport into the back of a shop.

So we are left with open spaces.

And what do we have a lot of?

Car parks.

Ah.

Suddenly the solution becomes rather more complicated.

Because the car park is the easiest bit of town-centre land to turn into a lovely green public space.

Take away the tarmac.

Plant some trees.

Put in some benches.

Maybe a little café.

Perhaps some flowers.

Everyone applauds.

Then someone asks:

“Where are we supposed to park?”

Silence.

And this is the point where we need to stop pretending that town-centre regeneration is about finding one clever answer.

It isn’t.

There isn’t a magic parking policy.

There isn’t a magic tree.

There isn’t a magic High Street grant.

And there certainly isn’t a magic phrase that can make people shop in the same way they did in 1978.

Because we don’t.

We shop online.

We shop at supermarkets.

We use retail parks.

We have food delivered to our homes.

We work differently.

We travel differently.

We live differently.

So perhaps our town centres need to be different too.

Maybe the future High Street isn’t primarily about shopping.

Maybe it is about living.

Working.

Eating.

Meeting people.

Entertainment.

Culture.

Leisure.

Community.

Experiences.

Perhaps the reason to visit a town centre shouldn’t simply be that you need to buy something.

Perhaps you should go because you actually want to be there.

That sounds like a remarkably simple idea.

It is also considerably harder to deliver.

Because it requires us to think about the whole town rather than one car park.

It means thinking about housing.

Transport.

Parking.

Businesses.

Public spaces.

Green space.

Markets.

Culture.

Leisure.

And the rather unfashionable concept of having a reason for people to visit.

Every town needs to understand what makes it different.

What is its identity?

What makes somebody living 15 miles away think:

“Do you know what? Let’s go there on Saturday.”

That might be a market.

It might be an historic centre.

It might be independent shops.

It might be restaurants.

It might be a river.

It might be a theatre.

It might be a festival.

It might be somewhere genuinely pleasant to spend a few hours.

But it has to be something.

Because if the only selling point is that there is a car park near a collection of shops selling things that can be bought cheaper online, we may have a slight problem.

And perhaps this is where our obsession with recreating the past becomes unhelpful.

We shouldn’t try to build the town centre of 1975.

We can’t.

The people are different.

The economy is different.

The technology is different.

Our habits are different.

And, perhaps most importantly, we have considerably more cars.

So the question shouldn’t be:

“How do we get back to how things were?”

It should be:

“What do we want our town to become?”

That is a much harder question.

But it is also a much more interesting one.

And it might finally get us away from the endless argument about whether parking should cost £2, £3 or nothing at all.

Because perhaps the future of our town centres shouldn’t be decided by the price of a parking ticket.

Perhaps it should be decided by whether people actually want to get out of their cars, walk around, meet other people, spend some money and, crucially, enjoy being there.

And if we can achieve that, then maybe we can have our trees.

We can have our buses.

We can have our shops.

We can have our cafés.

We can even have our cars.

We just can’t have absolutely everything, absolutely everywhere, absolutely free.

Because sadly, despite what some people seem to think, town planning isn’t a buffet.

You can’t simply take everything you fancy and leave the bill for somebody else.

World of Insanity

by David Palethorpe

Once upon a time, there was a fine line between sanity and insanity.

I mention this because these days it feels like every other day brings a “major, significant” opinion poll (their words, not mine) on just about everything you can imagine.

People may outwardly grumble about them, but secretly many love the overabundance of information, even if it is false.

Why?

Because it feeds the craving for more — an almost insane appetite for data that people increasingly accept at face value, without a moment’s scrutiny.

Is it any wonder, then, that politicians can now lie to us with impunity?

Polls that condemn them are dismissed as just “another poll,” or “fake news”

But here’s the real question: is it just me, or does the world feel like it’s heading to hell in a handcart – or it it in fact already there?

Political leaders are no longer walking the thin line between sanity and insanity — a line that seems to grow finer by the day.

And in some cases, it’s already been crossed: Farage. Trump. Putin. Netanyahu.

So, what happens next?

Perhaps the most practical and sanest thing the rest of us could do is hand them all a history book.

Then sit back and hope for the best.

When Power Kills the Law

by David Palethorpe

International law still exists on paper.

But when the world’s most powerful nations can disregard it without consequence, does it retain any meaningful authority?

The United Nations Security Council has been paralysed by its own design.

Its five permanent members possess the power to veto substantive action—and three of them, Russia, China and the United States, repeatedly use that privilege to protect themselves or their allies from accountability.

The United Nations still speaks, but too often it cannot act.

It has become the proverbial tiger without teeth.

Recent United States military action against Iran makes this failure painfully clear.

Whatever language is used to justify it in the American media, the unilateral attacks represent an unmistakable use of force in pursuit of a president’s ambitions.

They also demonstrate to the world that, when a powerful country chooses military action, the international system has few effective means of restraining it.

The United Kingdom’s refusal to condemn such action immediately and unequivocally should not be mistaken for neutrality.

Silence from an ally is itself a political choice.

By remaining quiet, the British Government risks aligning itself with international lawlessness while continuing to claim that it stands for a rules-based international order.

Those rules cannot be credible if they are enforced against weaker countries but treated as optional by the powerful.

We see the same pattern across the world.

Israel continues its devastating campaign in Gaza with impunity.

Russia and China use their influence to shield themselves and their allies from consequences.

Powerful states ignore United Nations resolutions when they prove inconvenient yet readily impose sanctions and demands upon nations with less economic or military power.

Justice applied selectively is not justice.

Law enforced only against the weak is not law in any meaningful sense; it is an abuse of power dressed in legal language.

This raises an unavoidable question:

What purpose does the United Nations now serve?

It still performs valuable humanitarian, diplomatic and peacekeeping work.

Abandoning it casually would create dangers of its own.

But we must also recognise that its central mechanism for maintaining international peace is no longer fit for purpose.

A system that gives five countries permanent authority to prevent action against themselves can never deliver equal accountability.

I recognise the irony of making this argument as an Englishman.

Britain has its own imperial history and has often helped create the very double standards it now claims to oppose.

But this is the twenty-first century.

We were supposed to have learned—from Iraq, from Gaza and from decades of selective justice—that military power without accountability leaves devastation behind and breeds further conflict.

Millions of people in the United States and the United Kingdom are horrified by what their governments do in their name.

Millions of others cheer those actions on.

That division should alarm us, particularly when nationalism, dressed up as patriotism makes the use of force easier to celebrate than to question.

Perhaps the time has come for law-abiding nations to begin building a new international body:

One without permanent vetoes,

One in which every member is subject to the same standards, and,

One capable of imposing consequences regardless of a country’s wealth, alliances or military strength.

Creating such an institution would be extraordinarily difficult.

Yet difficulty is not an excuse for accepting a system that repeatedly fails those it was established to protect.

I may not live to see what comes next.

My children and grandchildren will.

And I fear for the world we are leaving them—a world in which law restrains the weak, power protects the strong, and silence allows both to continue.

The British Weather: Too Wet, Too Hot, and Somehow Still Our Fault

by David Palethorpe

We had “a drop of rain” yesterday morning in Ipplepen which naturally for all of us who meet whilst walking our dogs became that major topic of conversation and the fact that the world seems intent in going to hell in a handcart was for a time forgotten.

There are few subjects guaranteed to unite the British people quite like the weather.

Politics may and increasingly does divide us, football may cause family members to stop speaking to one another, and religion is generally best avoided at all times but especially at the dinner table.

But…………

Mention the weather and suddenly everyone has something to say.

It is too cold.

It is too hot.

It is raining.

It is not raining enough.

It is windy.

It is not windy enough to blow the washing off the line.

The British have turned complaining about the weather into a national art form, and climate change has added an intriguing new dimension to the performance.

For generations, the British have regarded the weather as something that happens to us, rather than something we have any influence over.

We don’t control it.

We simply endure it, discuss it, and occasionally blame the Government.

A few years ago, forty consecutive days of rain as experienced earlier this year would have been regarded as perfectly normal British weather.

The drains would overflow, enormous puddles would appear everywhere, rivers would swell, reservoirs would fill to the brim and the countryside would become an astonishing number of shades of green.

This Green and Pleasant Land

“Lovely,” we’d say.

“Bit wet, though.”

Then the sun would come out.

For several days.

Then several weeks.

Suddenly temperatures would climb into the mid-thirties.

The pavements would shimmer.

Trains would slow down and come to a halt because the rails had become too hot.

The grass would turn the colour of toast.

Trees would start shedding their leaves in what appeared to be an emergency evacuation.

And the British would discover that sunshine, which we had spent six months begging for, was actually quite unpleasant.

“It’s too hot.”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Can’t breathe.”

“Why doesn’t anyone have air conditioning in this country?”

This is the fundamental British contradiction: we want sunshine, but not excessive sunshine; rain, but not too much rain; warmth, but preferably around 21 degrees, with a gentle breeze and perhaps a small cloud between 2:15 and 2:27 in the afternoon.

Climate change complicates matters considerably because it turns our favourite conversational subject into something rather more serious.

We have always treated unusual weather as entertainment.

Now we increasingly have to consider whether some of what we’re experiencing is part of a changing climate.

That creates an awkward situation for the average Briton.

On one hand, we are perfectly capable of accepting that the climate is changing.

On the other, we remain suspicious of anyone who mentions it while we are standing in the rain.

“Climate change?”

“Possibly.”

“Global warming?”

“Could be.”

“Anyway, did you see that downpour yesterday?”

The British relationship with climate change is therefore wonderfully complicated.

We understand the broad concept, but we also reserve the right to dismiss it whenever the weather happens to contradict our expectations.

If it’s freezing in April, someone will say, “Global warming, eh?”

If it’s 35 degrees in July, someone else will say, “There you are. Climate change.”

If it rains for three weeks, everyone concludes that the weather has gone mad.

And if we have a beautiful sunny weekend, we forget all about climate change and immediately start planning a barbecue.

There is also a curious British tendency to measure climate change personally.

“My father never had air conditioning.”

“I remember snow up to the windows in 1978.”

“Winters aren’t what they used to be.”

“My roses have never flowered this early.”

“My lawn has died.”

All of these observations may be perfectly genuine, but collectively they form the world’s least scientific climate-monitoring system:

Grandad’s Weather Memory.

Nevertheless, perhaps this is where British humour serves a useful purpose.

We joke about the rain, the heat, the hosepipe bans, the flooded roads and the absurdity of trying to dress appropriately for a day when the weather forecast changes every eleven minutes.

But underneath the jokes is a growing recognition that something is changing.

We may continue to complain when it rains.

We may complain when it doesn’t rain.

We may complain when it is 30 degrees.

We may complain when it falls to 10.

That part of being British is unlikely to change.

Indeed, if climate change eventually produces the perfect British summer — warm but not too warm, dry but not too dry, sunny but not scorching — we will probably find something else to complain about.

Because the British don’t really require good weather.

We require weather about which we can complain.

And preferably having a cup of tea while we’re doing it.

Left v Right – Or – Just Leave Us Alone

by David Palethorpe

There is something rather amusing about modern politics.

Mention that you disagree with one policy and, apparently, you have immediately revealed your true identity.

Disagree with the right? You must be a left-wing socialist.

Disagree with the left? Clearly, you are a right-wing fascist.

And if you disagree with both sides, congratulations: you are now an extremist from both directions.

It is a strange world in which political labels seem to have become more important than political thought.

The question is no longer necessarily, “What do you believe?”

It is, “Which tribe are you in?”

I have spent more than 50 years involved in local politics, and during that time I have managed the rather dubious achievement to some) of being both a Conservative and Labour councillor and, today, a Liberal Democrat councillor and deputy leader of Teignbridge District Council.

This tends to cause people some confusion.

“What exactly do you stand for?” they ask.

It is a perfectly reasonable question.

My answer is that I stand for broadly the same things I have always stood for.

What has changed, at various points in my political life, is where the political parties themselves have chosen to position themselves.

Perhaps I haven’t travelled quite as much as people think.

Perhaps the political furniture has simply been moved around while I was sitting on it.

For a long time, I considered myself a Conservative in the tradition of what was once described as One Nation Conservatism.

I believed in responsibility, sound public finances, community, the importance of law and order, and allowing people to get on with their lives.

Then my local Conservative organisation moved in a direction, some would describe as a move to the far right which I could no longer support.

So I found myself politically homeless.

A friend who was then a Labour leader invited me to join his party and for four years I served as a Labour councillor.

And then Labour changed too.

The party moved in a direction that I regarded as being too far to the left.

Once again, I found myself somewhere in the middle, looking around and wondering whether someone had accidentally removed the “centre” sign while I wasn’t looking.

Eventually, I concluded that local politics had and was following the national trend in becoming increasingly tribal.

Too often, anything the other party proposed was automatically bad, while anything your own party proposed was automatically good.

That is not politics at its best.

It is football with committee papers.

The result is that many people who do not fit neatly into one political box become disillusioned.

They look at the political debate and wonder where they belong.

And perhaps that helps explain why so many people don’t vote.

We are constantly told that voting is a privilege, a duty and an essential part of democracy.

All of those things are true.

But if people repeatedly feel that none of the political parties represents them, eventually they ask a perfectly understandable question:

“What is the point?”

I have never believed that changing political allegiance necessarily means changing your principles.

Sometimes it means the opposite.

Sometimes you remain broadly where you have always been, while the political party you once supported moves somewhere else.

That is certainly how I see my own political journey.

I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2021 and in 2023 I was elected to Teignbridge District Council, where I currently serve as deputy leader.

So where am I now?

Well, apparently that depends on which issue you ask me about.

On defence of the realm, I am probably somewhere to the right of the centre.

That should not be particularly surprising given my former service in the Royal Navy.

On policing, the courts and the prison service, I believe strongly in the importance of effective institutions, public safety and the rule of law.

Again, I suspect some people would place me on the right.

But ask me about the National Health Service, the shortage of NHS dentists, access to healthcare, education, the ownership of public utilities and opportunities for young people who do not go to university, and suddenly I appear to have wandered rather dramatically to the left.

The problem is that politics seems to assume that these positions cannot coexist.

Why not?

Why can’t someone believe in strong national defence and a properly funded health service?

Why can’t someone support the police while believing that government should interfere less in people’s private lives?

Why can’t someone believe that taxes are necessary while also demanding that governments spend those taxes wisely?

Why can’t someone support sound public finances while believing passionately that vulnerable people must be protected?

Perhaps the answer is that we have become too accustomed to thinking in political packages.

Choose Conservative and apparently you must accept the whole Conservative menu.

Choose Labour and you must eat the entire Labour meal.

Choose Liberal Democrat and presumably you are handed a basket containing everything from electoral reform to community politics and told not to ask too many questions about the recipe.

But most people do not actually think like that.

Most people are perfectly capable of having different views on different subjects.

And that, to me, is where the centre ground really exists.

It isn’t a precise point on a political ruler.

It is not a little circle in the middle of Parliament waiting for somebody to claim ownership of it.

It is an attitude.

It is the belief that government has an important role to play where collective action is necessary, but that government does not automatically know what is best for every individual and every family.

I have no objection to paying taxes.

In fact, I believe taxation is essential if we are to provide the public services people rightly expect and protect the most vulnerable in our society.

But there is a bargain involved.

If government takes my money, I expect it to use that money responsibly.

I expect politicians in Westminster and elsewhere to think beyond the next election.

I expect investment in services that actually matter.

And I expect governments and councils to distinguish between what is genuinely necessary and what is merely desirable.

Most importantly, I want government to leave people alone where it reasonably can.

I want people to be able to raise their families, spend time with their friends, build their businesses, contribute to their communities and live their lives without unnecessary interference or regulation.

It isn’t complicated.

In fact, perhaps it is almost embarrassingly simple.

Look after people when they genuinely need help.

Provide good public services.

Protect the vulnerable.

Maintain law and order.

Defend the country.

Educate our children.

Spend taxpayers’ money carefully.

And then, wherever and whenever possible, get out of people’s way.

Local government provides a particularly good illustration of why this matters.

Councillors of every political colour have to make difficult decisions.

We deal with budgets, services and competing demands every day.

The money simply isn’t there to do everything councils might once have done.

That means financial prudence is not an ideological luxury.

It is a necessity.

At Teignbridge, one thing I am particularly proud of is the council’s strong financial position and the absence of external borrowing.

That gives us a stronger foundation as we face the considerable changes that local government reorganisation will bring.

Of course, there will be difficult questions ahead.

The new unitary authorities will inherit different financial positions, and the consequences of that will become clearer over time.

But that is precisely why long-term thinking matters.

We should not simply ask, “What can we announce today?”

We should ask, “What will this mean in five, ten or twenty years?”

That is the sort of politics I believe many people want.

Not left versus right.

Not good versus evil.

Not one tribe against another.

Just sensible decisions based on evidence, experience and what actually works.

So if someone wants to label me left-wing, right-wing, socialist, conservative, liberal, centrist or—my personal favourite—some sort of politically confused hybrid, they are very welcome to do so.

After 50 years in politics, I have probably collected enough labels to wallpaper the spare bedroom.

But labels are not the important thing.

Values are.

And perhaps the greatest mistake modern politics makes is assuming that everyone has to choose a side before they are allowed to have an opinion.

I don’t.

I am perfectly happy to take an idea from the left, another from the right and, when appropriate, tell both sides that they are talking absolute nonsense.

That may not fit neatly into a political box.

But perhaps that is precisely the point.

Maybe the centre ground isn’t missing.

Maybe it is simply occupied by millions of people who are far too busy getting on with their lives to spend all day shouting at each other on social media.

And perhaps politics would be considerably healthier if we started listening to them, and if we start listening they might just decide that their vote is something to be valued.

USS Abraham Lincoln

The USS Abraham Lincoln: What Does Its Extraordinary Deployment Tell Us About America’s War with Iran?

by David Palethorpe

As a former Royal Navy Warrant Officer there is something deeply uncomfortable about the story of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Not because an American aircraft carrier has spent an extraordinary amount of time at sea.

Aircraft carriers are built to operate at sea, and the United States Navy has demonstrated time and again that it can sustain very demanding deployments.

What troubles me is what the Lincoln’s deployment appears to tell us about the planning, sustainability and assumptions behind America’s war with Iran.

The Lincoln has now been deployed for more than 260 days, with more than 200 days without a port call.

Around 5,000 sailors and Marines are aboard.

The ship has been heavily involved in American operations against Iran.

The Navy says the carrier has conducted more than 10,000 sorties and dropped about 1.5 million pounds of ordnance during the deployment. 

Whatever your opinion of the war itself that is an extraordinary operational achievement.

But it also raises an extraordinary question.

Was this what the United States planned for?

The question nobody should be afraid to ask

I am not questioning the courage or professionalism of the personnel aboard the Abraham Lincoln.

Quite the opposite.

If anything, they deserve enormous credit.

They have continued to operate aircraft, maintain machinery, stand watches, refuel aircraft, conduct replenishment operations and carry out combat missions while being separated from their families for months on end.

The question is therefore not about their commitment.

It is about the people who planned, (or didn’t) the operation.

When a country sends its armed forces into a war, there are some very basic questions that must be answered before the first shot is fired.

What are we trying to achieve?

How long is it expected to take?

What forces are required?

What ammunition, fuel, spare parts and personnel will those forces consume?

What happens if the war lasts twice as long as expected?

And perhaps the most important question:

What is the plan for replacing those forces when they reach the limits of sustainable deployment?

Those are not political questions.

Those are not morality questions.

They are military questions.

They are logistics questions.

And ultimately, they are questions of leadership.

America we are told did have declared objectives

It is important to be fair here.

It would be wrong to claim that the Trump administration simply went to war with Iran without announcing any objectives.

The US government described Operation Epic Fury as having specific aims, including destroying Iran’s offensive missile capability and production, destroying its navy and other security infrastructure, and preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

So there were objectives.

But an objective written on a briefing document isn’t the same thing as a credible end-state.

Destroying an enemy’s military capability is not necessarily the same thing as ending a war.

And this is where I think the Lincoln raises a much bigger issue.

If the military operation continues for month after month, then at some point the original assumptions about duration, force requirements and logistics has to be revisited.

The Lincoln was originally expected to return much earlier. Its deployment was subsequently extended, leaving the carrier and its crew at sea for an extraordinary period. 

That should make every taxpayer, politician and military professional ask:

What changed?

A carrier isn’t a consumable item

One of the things that should concern the USA public most is the way their leaders discuss military hardware as though it were simply another entry on an inventory sheet.

America has aircraft carriers.

Therefore, send one.

But a carrier isn’t a box of ammunition.

It is a floating city and an enormously complicated industrial machine.

There are thousands of people aboard.

There are nuclear reactors, turbines, generators, pumps, electrical systems, aviation fuel systems, weapons systems, radar, communications equipment, aircraft maintenance facilities and hundreds of other systems that must function continuously.

And all of them require maintenance.

The longer the ship remains deployed, the greater the maintenance burden becomes.

Some maintenance can be performed at sea.

Spare parts can be flown out.

Technicians can be delivered.

Replenishment ships can provide fuel, food, ammunition and other supplies.

The US Navy should be exceptionally good at this.

But there is a fundamental limit.

You cannot fly a shipyard to a carrier.

Eventually machinery requires industrial-level maintenance.

Eventually personnel require proper rest and relief.

Eventually aircraft need deeper maintenance.

Eventually the ship itself needs to return to a facility capable of doing the work that cannot be done at sea.

That isn’t a criticism of the United States Navy.

It’s engineering reality.

The human beings aboard the ship

And then there is the issue that I think has been unfairly lost in the political argument: the people.

Reports have emerged of shortages, poor living conditions, mould and serious concerns about mental health aboard the Lincoln.

Families have raised concerns about the welfare of personnel, while lawmakers have called for investigations.

The Pentagon has disputed some of the more severe characterisations of conditions aboard the ship. 

We should therefore be careful.

We don’t know that every allegation is accurate.

We shouldn’t turn unverified claims into established facts.

But we also shouldn’t dismiss them.

Because even if only some of these reports are accurate, they raise an important question about how long a crew can reasonably be expected to remain at sea under combat conditions.

Military service involves hardship.

Everyone who joins a navy knows that.

But hardship is not the same thing as poor planning.

There is a difference between asking personnel to endure difficult circumstances because the operational situation genuinely requires it and asking them to endure them because there was no adequate relief plan.

That distinction matters.

This is where logistics becomes strategy

I have always thought that one of the most underestimated aspects of military planning is logistics.

People like to talk about aircraft, missiles, aircraft carriers and precision weapons.

But ultimately, an army or navy fights with what it can sustain.

Montgomery understood this at El Alamein.

The D-Day planners understood it.

Eisenhower understood it.

One of the greatest ever planners, General George Marshall understood it.

The lesson is brutally simple:

You cannot sustain military operations with bravery alone.

You need fuel.

You need ammunition.

You need food.

You need spare parts.

You need replacement personnel.

You need maintenance facilities.

And you need a plan for what happens when your most important assets have been operating continuously for far longer than anticipated.

That is why the Lincoln matters.

It isn’t merely a story about one aircraft carrier.

It is potentially a window into the wider problem of force generation.

The relief problem

The US Navy has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

That sounds impressive.

It is impressive.

But not all eleven are available for combat operations at the same moment.

Some are deployed.

Some are preparing for deployment.

Some are training.

Some are undergoing maintenance.

Some may be dealing with delays or unexpected problems.

This is where the difference between inventory and capability becomes important.

If one carrier must remain deployed for eight or nine months because another carrier isn’t immediately available to replace it, then the question isn’t whether America owns enough carriers.

The question is whether it has enough deployable and sustainable carrier capacity.

The fact that the USS George Washington is now being sent towards the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln is therefore significant.

Reports indicate that this movement may have consequences for the American carrier presence in the Indo-Pacific. 

In other words, solving one problem can create another.

Move the carrier from the Pacific to the Middle East and the Middle East problem becomes easier.

But what happens to the Pacific?

That is precisely what strategic planning is supposed to anticipate.

And then there are America’s allies

There is another issue that I believe deserves much more attention.

America’s global military power has never depended entirely upon American ships.

It depends upon allies.

It depends upon bases.

It depends upon ports.

It depends upon airfields.

It depends upon intelligence sharing, maintenance facilities, fuel supplies and political agreements.

This is why the deterioration of America’s relationships with traditional allies so concerning.

Alliances aren’t simply diplomatic arrangements.

They are part of military logistics.

A friendly port can mean the difference between a ship remaining operational and a ship having to travel thousands of miles home for maintenance.

A friendly airfield can extend the range of military operations.

A partner willing to provide fuel, supplies or repair facilities is effectively contributing to military capability.

So when politicians casually dismiss allies, they should remember that alliances aren’t just about friendship.

They are part of the infrastructure that makes global military power possible.

The question I keep coming back to

So, what does the Abraham Lincoln tell us?

I don’t think it tells us that the US Navy is weak.

It doesn’t.

I don’t think it proves that American personnel aren’t properly trained.

It doesn’t.

And I certainly don’t think it proves that America has somehow lost its military superiority.

What it does tell us is that even the world’s most powerful military has limits.

And those limits become visible when a war lasts longer than expected.

The Lincoln has done an extraordinary job.

But perhaps that is precisely why we should ask why it was required to do such an extraordinary job for so long.

If the original plan anticipated a much shorter operation, what was the contingency plan?

If the conflict was expected to last longer, where was the relief?

If the Navy knew the deployment would be extended, why did the crew have to endure such a prolonged period without a normal port visit?

And if the answer is that circumstances changed, then the next question is the most important of all:

How quickly can America’s military adapt when the war doesn’t follow the plan?

That, is the real test of military power.

Not how many carriers America owns.

Not how many billions it spends.

Not how impressive its weapons look on television.

But whether it can deploy, sustain, repair, relieve and ultimately regenerate its forces while achieving a clearly defined political objective.

The crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln have demonstrated extraordinary endurance.

Now it is time for the politicians and military planners to demonstrate something equally important:

That they had a plan worthy of the people they asked to carry it out.

From My Perspective, “From My Perspective” Is Doing a Lot of Heavy Lifting

By David Palethorpe

In a recent interview on BBC a Senior Westminster politician in answer to questions used the phrase, ‘from by perspective’ on five occasions which raises the question what exactly does that mean?

There is a local councillor who has also developed an extraordinary attachment to the phrase “from my perspective.”

Not occasionally.

Not when introducing a genuinely personal judgment.

Invariably.

Almost every criticism arrives wrapped in it, like a parcel marked

“FRAGILE: DO NOT QUESTION CONTENTS.”

“From my perspective, this has not been handled well.”

“From my perspective, officers have not done enough.”

“From my perspective, the council should have acted differently.”

“From my perspective, this is disappointing.”

And there we are.

Perspective delivered.

Case closed.

No evidence need apply.

The obvious difficulty is that nobody is ever quite told what this celebrated perspective actually consists of.

Is it based on experience?

Evidence?

Data?

A conversation?

A report?

A performance indicator?

A legal opinion?

A policy framework?

An Ai discovery?

A dream?

The movement of a curtain in an upstairs window?

We simply do not know.

The perspective floats into the chamber fully formed, apparently requiring neither parentage nor provenance.

It is simply there.

A perspective.

And apparently that should be enough.

This presents the rest of us with a problem, because in normal adult conversation, when somebody advances a criticism, it is considered reasonably conventional to ask what it is based on.

Not in order to oppress them.

Not to silence them.

Not to deny their constitutional right to possess thoughts.

Just to establish whether the thought has any useful connection with reality.

“What evidence supports that?”

“What information are you relying on?”

“Against what standard are you making that assessment?”

“Can you explain why you have reached that conclusion?”

These are not exactly the opening moves of the Spanish Inquisition.

Yet asking them can sometimes produce the reaction of a man who has just discovered that his diplomatic immunity does not extend to committee procedure.

There is irritation.

There is offence.

There is sometimes the unmistakable suggestion that the act of questioning the perspective is somehow more objectionable than the original criticism contained within it.

This is fascinating.

Because “from my perspective” appears, in such circumstances, to perform a rather useful political function.

It allows somebody to make a sweeping judgment while simultaneously building an emergency exit into the sentence.

If challenged, it was only a perspective.

If applauded, presumably it was penetrating political insight.

Heads I’m right.

Tails you are being unreasonable for questioning me.

It is the rhetorical equivalent of throwing a brick through a window with a note attached saying, “This brick represents my personal view.”

The window remains broken.

But apparently, we should admire the nuance.

I have therefore been thinking about perspectives.

And, from my perspective, I have reached an important conclusion.

If you repeatedly tell me something is “from your perspective” without explaining what that perspective is based upon, then I have no particular reason to give your perspective priority over mine.

Indeed, from my perspective, your perspective differs from my perspective.

And because your perspective has arrived without explanation, evidence or context, from my perspective there is a perfectly reasonable possibility that your perspective is an incorrect assessment of the matter about which you have a perspective.

I appreciate that this is complicated.

It becomes easier after the fifth perspective.

The essential principle is this: possessing a perspective is not the same thing as possessing an argument.

I possess a perspective on quantum mechanics.

It is not a particularly useful one.

If I walked into CERN tomorrow and announced, “From my perspective, you people have seriously overcomplicated this,” I would not expect the Large Hadron Collider to be redesigned before lunch.

Nor could I reasonably become indignant if somebody asked whether I knew what a hadron was.

The entitlement to an opinion is universal.

The entitlement to have that opinion treated as authoritative is not.

This distinction seems particularly important in local and national government.

Councillors and MPs should challenge.

They should question.

They should criticise.

They should scrutinise decisions and hold administrations to account.

But scrutiny is not simply saying something negative in a confident voice.

Governance is not a competitive exercise in who can look most disappointed while withholding the reasons.

If you say a service or policy is failing, tell us against which measure.

If you say officers should have done something differently, tell us what they should have done.

If you say a decision was wrong, identify the alternative.

If you say performance is poor, show us the performance.

Otherwise, we are not really debating policy.

We are holding a séance for unexplained opinions.

The phrase itself is not the problem.

“From my perspective” can be perfectly sensible language.

It can signal humility.

It can acknowledge that others may reasonably disagree.

It can distinguish interpretation from fact.

But that only works if something follows it.

“From my perspective, having read the report and looked at the figures, I think the council has underestimated this risk.”

Fine.

Now we have a discussion.

“From my perspective, this is all wrong.”

Why?

“That’s my perspective.”

That is not an argument.

That is a doorstop.

The situation becomes particularly absurd when a person who routinely offers unsubstantiated perspectives appears irritated when anybody else introduces a competing one.

Surely perspectives are meant to be a wonderfully pluralistic business.

If one political representative has a perspective, another may presumably have one too.

Perhaps even several.

We could issue them at the door.

Yet sometimes the rules appear rather different.

Their perspective is an observation.

Your perspective is a challenge.

Their perspective is scrutiny.

Your perspective is confrontation.

Their perspective deserves to be heard.

Your perspective requires moderation.

That is an exceptionally convenient understanding of democratic discourse.

I have another perspective.

Public office should involve a slightly higher standard than “I think this, and I dislike being asked why.”

Politicians and especial local councillors make decisions involving public money, public services and people’s livelihoods.

Words spoken in public meetings can affect professional reputations and public confidence.

If you are going to criticise somebody’s work, a council service or a major decision, being asked for your reasoning should not come as a shocking procedural ambush.

It should be expected.

A robust opinion should survive a question.

If it collapses when somebody asks, “What are you basing that on?”, it may not have been a particularly robust opinion.

Perhaps it was more of a mood.

And moods are perfectly legitimate.

They simply do not require a committee paper.

So I intend to listen with renewed interest whenever I next hear those familiar words.

“From my perspective…”

I shall wait.

Perhaps evidence will follow.

Perhaps context.

Perhaps an explanation.

Perhaps an actual proposal.

And if none arrives, I shall respectfully exercise my own right to perspective.

From my perspective, an unexplained perspective is an assertion in fancy dress.

From my perspective, criticism without evidence is commentary, not scrutiny.

From my perspective, becoming annoyed when somebody asks you to explain your view does not make the view stronger.

And from my perspective, if “from my perspective” is repeatedly used as a substitute for “here is why I think this,” then the phrase has ceased to demonstrate intellectual humility and has started doing unpaid work as a rhetorical shield.

Of course, the person uttering the phrase may disagree.

They may have an entirely different perspective.

Perhaps ‘from my perspective’ has replaced the phrase ‘alternative facts’?

Who knows?

Either way I’ll look forward to hearing it.

Preferably with an explanation – and evidence – this time.

Devon Cannot Build Its Future on a Water Deficit

by David Palethorpe

South-West Water delivered a letter of 7 August 2026 asking, in fact informing, households across Devon and the wider South-West to accept restrictions on hosepipe use because prolonged dry weather, below-average rainfall and sustained demand have put water supplies under exceptional pressure.

In the immediate drought, residents have been asked to use water responsibly.

Every litre saved helps.

The letter raises a much larger question that cannot be answered simply by asking residents to turn off their hosepipes:

“If Devon’s water system is under this much stress and pressure today, how will it support the scale of housing and economic development planned for the decades ahead”?

That question must be answered now because Devon  (and the rest of the country) is being required to build at significant pace.

Teignbridge’s newly adopted Local Plan provides for a forward housing requirement of 720 homes a year for five years and a minimum of 14,400 homes over the plan period.

Plymouth, South Hams and West Devon are currently assessed against a standard-method requirement of 2,603 homes a year, excluding the Dartmoor allowance; their latest assessment identifies only 2.33 years of deliverable housing supply against that requirement.

Mid Devon’s current calculation is around 572 homes annually. In East Devon, the emerging large scale new community is being planned on the scale of around 10,000 homes.

These are not marginal additions.

They represent major additional demands on water supply, sewerage, roads, schools, healthcare and energy infrastructure.

Devon urgently needs housing.

Affordability and availability are serious problems, and the answer cannot simply be to stop building.

But responsible planning cannot mean allocating thousands of homes first and discovering afterwards that the infrastructure necessary to support them is inadequate.

“Water must become an infrastructure-first test for development”.

South-West Water’s Water Resources Management Plan exists precisely to consider how supply and demand can be balanced over the next 25 years and how reliable supplies can be maintained while protecting the environment.

That long-term planning is increasingly important because climate change is altering the assumptions on which previous infrastructure was designed.

The Environment Agency says climate change is increasing the risk of drought, while the Met Office projects hotter and drier UK summers as the climate warms.

The consequences are already becoming familiar: higher peak demand, falling river flows, stressed ecosystems and reservoirs being drawn down more quickly.

In July this year, the Environment Agency reported record soil-moisture deficits across south-west England and classified some reservoirs as exceptionally low for the time of year.

Climate change therefore changes the planning equation.

We cannot treat water as an unlimited resource that simply appears whenever another housing allocation is added to a Local Plan.

Nor can increased abstraction from rivers and catchments be the automatic answer, because those same water systems support wildlife, farming, tourism and the landscapes on which Devon’s economy depends.

Public concerns about South-West Water must also be taken seriously.

South-West Water and its parent company Pennon rightly point to substantial investment now being made.

Pennon reported £588.5 million of investment in its water businesses in 2025/26.

That investment is welcome.

But spending today does not remove legitimate questions about whether sufficient investment was made early enough, whether resilience kept pace with population growth and climate risk, and why emergency restrictions have again become necessary.

Confidence has also been damaged by South-West Water’s wider environmental record.

In the Environment Agency’s 2024 assessment, the company had the worst sewerage pollution-incident rate among England’s water and sewerage companies.

Drinking-water resources and sewage performance are different issues, but both influence public confidence in the stewardship of an essential private utility.

The solution requires a much clearer division of responsibilities between developers, councils and South-West Water.

Developers should pay the proper cost of infrastructure directly required by their development.

South-West Water’s current charging arrangements already include new connections, infrastructure charges and water-main requisitions.

Councils can also use planning conditions and Section 106 agreements to mitigate development impacts.

But there is an important legal distinction.

Section 106 obligations must be necessary to make development acceptable, directly related to the development and fairly and reasonably related to it in scale and kind.

In other words, developers should pay for the additional burden they create.

They cannot simply be handed the bill for decades of deficiencies in a regional utility network.

“Historic underinvestment and strategic network resilience remain responsibilities of the regulated water company and the regulatory system”.

What councils can do is demand much stronger evidence before major developments proceed.

For substantial Local Plan allocations, we should require up-to-date water-cycle and infrastructure assessments.

Before thousands of homes are occupied, communities should be able to see where their water will come from, what treatment and storage capacity is available, what reinforcement is required, when it will be delivered and who is financially responsible.

Planning permissions for major developments should be phased where necessary so that housing occupation does not run ahead of essential water and wastewater infrastructure.

New development must also become part of the solution.

Water-efficient fittings, smart meters, rainwater harvesting, grey-water reuse, sustainable drainage and landscaping designed to minimise potable-water consumption can substantially reduce future demand.

The Government has itself consulted on tightening water-efficiency standards for new homes, recognising the need to reconcile housing growth with water scarcity.

This approach is entirely consistent with Liberal Democrat policy.

At the 2025 Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, members adopted the For People, For Planet climate policy.

It recognises that droughts, heatwaves and other climate impacts are becoming more severe and calls for climate resilience to be built into decision-making.

Liberal Democrat policy specifically supports stronger planning and regulatory frameworks, water-supply enhancements and investment to protect communities against drought, flooding and heatwaves.

For Liberal Democrats in Devon, that means protecting scarce natural resources while also delivering the homes local people need.

It means demanding faster leakage reduction, resilient reservoirs and networks, stronger protection for rivers and catchments, and much greater water efficiency from every major new development.

It is not anti-development.

It is sustainable development.

There is a simple principle at stake: the environmental cost of growth should not be transferred to existing residents, while the consequences of historic infrastructure decisions should not be transferred wholesale to new homeowners and developers.

South-West Water’s letter asks every household to play its part during this drought.

That is reasonable.

But residents are entitled to ask the same of South-West Water, developers, regulators and government.

Devon needs homes.

It needs jobs and economic growth.

It also needs clean rivers and secure water supplies.

Those ambitions are compatible —

“but only if infrastructure comes with development, rather than years behind it”.

For every major Local Plan allocation, the test should therefore be straightforward:

Show us the water.

Show us the capacity.

Show us the infrastructure.

Show us who is paying for it.

And show us that it will be delivered before the homes depend upon it.

That is how Devon can grow while protecting one of its most precious — and increasingly scarce — natural resources.

Cllr David Palethorpe

Teignbridge District Council

At What Point – Water

At What Point?

By David Palethorpe

There comes a point in every national conversation when somebody has to ask the most inconvenient question of all:

At what point do we admit that we haven’t learned the lesson?

For those of us old enough to remember 1976, it is difficult to forget.

What a summer.

May, June, July, August and into September seemed to deliver endless sunshine.

Temperatures regularly climbed towards — and sometimes beyond — 30 degrees.

Britain discovered that it could, occasionally, behave like a Mediterranean country.

There was just one slight problem.

We ran short of water.

There were standpipes in streets.

People queued with containers.

Water bowsers appeared across the country.

It was quite an achievement: a nation enjoying a glorious summer while simultaneously discovering that turning on a tap was no longer something it could take entirely for granted.

And, importantly, 1976 taught us something.

Our water infrastructure needed resilience.

The drought exposed the vulnerability of the system, prompting major investment in reservoirs, interconnections and drought planning.

Then came the great privatisation argument.

In England and Wales, the water industry was privatised in 1989, with the argument that private capital could provide the investment required to modernise infrastructure and improve the system.

The old pipes were, we were told, old.

Some were Victorian.

They needed replacing.

The answer was investment.

So here we are.

50 years after 1976.

And after another period of prolonged hot, dry weather, we find ourselves having the same conversation.

Drought.

Water restrictions.

Warnings about supplies.

Concerns about resilience.

Concerns about leaks.

Concerns about infrastructure.

Now, to be fair, things have improved in some respects.

Ofwat says leakage has fallen by 43% since privatisation, and the sector has invested heavily in infrastructure.

But here’s the slightly awkward bit.

After half a century of private ownership, investment, regulation and promises of resilience, Ofwat still says around a fifth of the water entering the network is lost through leakage.

And the industry now has a record £104 billion investment programme for 2025–30.

Which rather brings us back to the question.

At what point does resilience become resilient?

Because apparently, we have been building it for about fifty years.

And yet every time nature turns the thermostat up and the rain decides to take a holiday, we are reminded that our water system remains under pressure.

Meanwhile, investors have quite reasonably expected a return on their capital.

Ofwat itself acknowledges that equity investors seek returns through dividends and/or growth in the value of their investments.

There is nothing inherently wrong with investment producing a return.

The question is whether an essential public resource should ever reach the point where the financial interests surrounding the system become more reliable than the system itself.

Because water isn’t a luxury product.

We can postpone buying a new television.

We can survive without a weekend away.

We can even, with sufficient courage, turn the heating down.

But water?

We need it.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether private companies can operate water infrastructure.

Clearly, they can.

The question is whether the model has delivered the level of resilience that was promised — and whether enough of the money flowing through the system is being directed towards the thing customers actually need.

More reservoirs.

Better pipes.

Less leakage.

Greater capacity.

Greater resilience.

And a system capable of dealing with the climate that is not only actually arriving, it is here, rather than the climate we remember.

Because climate change has rather inconveniently removed the luxury of waiting another fifty years.

Ofwat itself now says the conditions that made 1976 exceptional are becoming more frequent, and that the system needs to be designed for a warmer and drier future.

So perhaps, when the next drought arrives — and it will — we should resist the temptation to act surprised.

Instead, perhaps we should ask the question we should have been asking all along:

At what point do we stop describing resilience as something we’re building and start measuring whether we’ve actually built it?

Because after fifty years, the answer shouldn’t be:

“Give us another five.”

And it certainly shouldn’t be:

“Don’t worry. We’re investing.”

The British public has heard that one before.

In 1976, we were given the lesson.

Perhaps the real question now is whether we ever, or will ever learn it well enough.