At the end of last month, disastrous floods struck the north of England, leaving hundreds of homes under water and causing several fatalities. It was a dramatic warning that freak weather conditions are here to stay, with last year's drought replaced this summer by prolonged heavy rain. Yet this month's series of deluges still seems to have taken many people in central, west and southern England by surprise. "It's raining, blame the government", they say in Italy, and that's exactly what has happened as people in the affected areas look for someone to berate for the dreadful conditions in which they find themselves.
The criticism started at the beginning of this month when people in Hull and Sheffield claimed that the Government had not promised sufficient money to repair homes and infrastructure affected by June's floods. Last week, as many more homes were threatened by rising water in the Severn and Thames areas, and thousands of people in Gloucester found themselves without tap water, the chorus of complaint grew louder: the Government wasn't doing enough to help, and the emergency was its fault in the first place for not properly maintaining the country's flood defences. The water companies were attacked for not providing bowsers quickly enough, and soon the complaints broadened to embrace global issues. On Wednesday evening, residents of flood-threatened home in west Oxford staged a demonstration on the flooded Botley Road against climate change. There were more demonstrations later in the week.
Much of this was to be expected as people took stock of the devastation around them, and felt angry and frightened at the prospect of more heavy rain this weekend. But it is also clear that logic has gone out of the window as blame is heaped on the Government and councils for failing to predict events that many householders affected by the floods did not anticipate themselves. It is true that our changing climate means that flood plains are becoming wider, but it has been known for a long time that thousands of houses have been built in areas of the country which are likely to be at risk if there are high levels of rainfall. That is why the emergency raises uncomfortable questions about personal responsibility, the relationship between Government and individuals, and the expectations people have of their elected representatives, both at local level and in Parliament.
With heavy rain forecast, how many people had the foresight to stock up on sandbags or bottled water? How many realised that they, and not the widely loathed privatised water companies, were responsible for routine maintenance of the drains directly beneath their houses? This has come as a shock to people who never previously gave much thought to the way their own use of water has placed a strain on domestic drains built at a time of much lower population density. Yesterday Baroness Young, head of the Environment Agency, spelled the end of this state of denial, making it clear that water bills will have to rise to cover the cost of upgrading drains and flood defences. "You either pay upstream to prevent, or you pay downstream to mop up, but you've got to pay," she said. Some estimates suggest that 30 per cent of households damaged by flood water are uninsured and while some people living on poor estates cannot afford the premiums, others simply decided to take a risk.
Last week Gordon Brown, who must be aware of the damage the emergency could yet do to his government, visited flooded parts of the country and increased the amount of aid available. Local authorities are already saying it is not enough; on Friday, Gloucestershire County Council said its road repair bill alone will be £25m. Local authorities also want to see more government money spent on improving flood defences, with reports last week suggesting that hundreds of thousands of homes up and down the country could be flooded in future. The most vulnerable area, East Anglia, has 330,000 houses at risk and a fifth of flood defences rated as fair, poor or very poor. In the Midlands, almost half of flood defences fall into one of those categories, and in the Thames area it is a third. At first glance this is a scandal, a disaster waiting to happen, but governments tend to spend money on institutions close to voters' hearts, such as schools and the NHS. It is not as if flood defences are a big election issue or filled MPs' postbags before this summer's freak weather propelled them to the top of the public agenda.
The Conservative leader, David Cameron, who went ahead with a visit to Rwanda last week after spending the weekend in his flooded constituency of Witney, has been bombarded with questions about his absence as though he were personally responsible for carrying people from their homes. On this occasion, Cameron's difficulties are evidence not of his uncaring attitude but of the unhealthy relationship between elected representatives and their constituents at a time of widespread political disengagement.
Political parties no longer have mass memberships; the proportion of the electorate that votes is worryingly low, especially in local elections where turnouts sometimes struggle to reach double figures. Politicians rack their brains for ways to engage people in the political process, battling apathy and cynicism at every turn; some of this is no doubt the parties' own faults for failing to offer candidates who stimulate and interest voters, but some blame must attach to populist newspapers which encourage the notion that politicians are venal and self-interested.
The consequence is a state of affairs in which people rarely lobby their elected representatives about things that really matter, such as the state of the nation's flood defences; they approach them in the guise of irate consumers, complaining about parochial issues such as parking, or ask for help with individual housing and immigration problems. Earlier this month, a Midlands MP told me that a constituent recently approached him at a social event and listed everything he had done for the man's family over the years: the MP had helped his grandmother get a council house, sorted out another relative's invalidity benefit and so on. "But I'm still not voting for you!" the man exclaimed at the end, as though it were a badge of pride. The MP told the story wearily, as an illustration of the high expectations of some of his constituents, but it is characteristic of attitudes up and down the country.
Politicians are regarded these days as an all-purpose complaints department, which is one of the things they exist for, but this summer's floods demonstrate the dangers of such political apathy. It has taken freak weather to highlight one particular issue – the problem of assuming that large numbers of people can live on flood plains without taking steps to protect themselves – but there is a bigger lesson here. Over the last month, the assumption that "they" will take care of us, whatever happens, has been shown to be unrealistic and dangerous. Blaming the Government when it rains, especially if your house is under four feet of water, may make you feel better. But it won't save your most valued possessions – or your life.
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