The Waterboy

Part 4 of Eco Emergency

Water… It’s pretty amazing, huh?

Did you know that 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered?

Still, it’s probably less than the amount of Clive Lewis’s X feed about the stuff.

The Labour MP is positively passionate about H₂O - that’s when he’s not supporting a long list of campaign groups, such as Compass, Zero Hour, Defend Our Juries, Green New Deal Rising or defending Just Stop Oil activists:

Lewis posts so regularly about water that my Substack might break if I attempt to paste them all below. But here’s the gist:

Thames Water/ privatised water = bad

Public ownership of water = good

Lots of sewage content too

Roses are red, violets are blue and…

“Rivers filled with excrement are a ticking time bomb for this country”!

Someone who shares Lewis’s passion for water is Feargal Sharkey:

You can tune into Feargal’s Fridays on LBC to find out more:

Lewis has tagged Sharkey and a fair few others in his water-related posts.

Like the campaign group “We Own It”:

… which Sharkey bangs the drum for as well as Tim Farron:

… and Carla Denyer (middle row). You can also see Michael Walker from Novara Media top right…

… who recently hosted Denyer on a Novara Media panel with Domi Palmer, a climate justice activist, and Vince in Bristol:

Denyer - as you may remember from my last pieces - is a Green Deal Rising champion:

As well as being funded by We Deserve Better, which Corbyn is also funded by - as well as being a New Green Deal Champion:

Farron, on the other hand, receives funding from the Refugee, Asylum & Migration Policy Project (RAMP), which I only mention because Labour MP Olivia Blake is also funded by this group…

… who also happens to be a Green New Deal Champion:

Same for Sian Berry (on the We Own It campaign Instagram)…

… and Zarah Sultana:

Busy times for these MPs!

Back to We Own It…

So effective is the group that it was recently named one of Carol Vorderman’s “Good Organisations to Follow” in her new book, Now What?

… as was Sharkey himself:

Hardly surprising as Vorderman is passionate about water:

On September 12 she said she’d be at the “March for Clean Water”….

… which Sharkey is leading:

However, the date for the march was rescheduled - something which Jenny Jones, the Green Party Lord, retweeted on her X feed:

Hopefully she was able to let Vorderman know as they are already acquainted:

Although maybe not as close as Vorderman is to Jemma Forte and Marina Purkiss:

… who are also very passionate about the water industry, which has been the subject of episodes on their show The Trawl.

The Trawl is produced by Global - the home of Novara Media’s podcasts and LBC - which has clearly found a growing market for content about Britain’s waterways.

Perhaps water is the issue of our time - after all, look at the other accounts Lewis tagged in this campaign, which he shared on X:

more:

Above is Richard Murphy - who you may remember (from Part 3 of Eco Emergency) was part of The Green New Deal Parliamentary APPG with Lewis.

Then there’s these accounts:

And another:

Vince (above) spoke to The i in July about the water industry:

The March for Clean Water has a coalition behind it:

This includes Greenpeace (top right) - which you may remember was also represented in The Green New Deal APPG:

“He worked at Greenpeace International for ten years”

Perhaps the most famous people related to Greenpeace, incidentally, are the four men in Led by Donkeys - see this 2019 piece by Guido Fawkes. A little fact of the day for you.

Vorderman visited the group in Bristol earlier this month.

Although Led by Donkeys were in Bristol, the group’s registered address is 71-75 Shelton Street in London:

which, coincidentally, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, once registered a campaign group at (The Burning Pink Party):

Some MPs are also registered there:

Extinction Rebellion (or rather, its Health wing) backs the March for Clean Water:

Vince once funded the group but went off it in 2021, according to The Times.

Nowadays he funds the Good Law Project, which is in the coalition.

To show you what a small world left-wing politics is, Vorderman has previously worked with The Good Law Project on its VIP files.

As well as fronting Vince’s HOT AF campaign:

As did Fortes:

The March for Clean Water coalition also includes WWF…

… which I only noticed as yesterday I was researching the charity My Life My Say, whose #GiveAnX democracy campaign (around this year’s General Election) was promoted by WWF UK:

To recap (see P1 and P3 of Eco Emergency), Mete Coban, who was appointed Sadiq Khan’s Deputy Mayor for the Environment, is the former CEO of My Life My Say.

Here’s him promoting its “Give an X” campaign in June:

Another account that encouraged voters to “GiveAnX” was Unlock Democracy…

… which ran a joint campaign with Compass.

To recap, in August Clive Lewis and the campaign group were looking for a joint assistant (to work for Lewis 3 x days a week and Compass x 2):

Perhaps “a small world” doesn’t quite describe left-wing politics; it’s more of a minuscule one. Take the fact that Neal Lawson, the Executive Director of Compass, is an advisor for We Own It.

There’s also the fact that Labour MP Nadia Whittome - another Green New Deal Champion…

… spoke at Compass’s event at the Labour Party Conference, along with Jovan Owusu-Nepaul - who stood against Nigel Farage in Clacton:

anyway, coming back to My Life My Say…

Since Coban became Khan’s Deputy Mayor for the Environment, he also seems to have got the bug for water activism:

Perhaps it’s Owusu-Nepaul’s influence, who seems to be a good friend…

… as his retweets suggest he’s interested in waterways too.

Time for another water episode on The Trawl?

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