As Rishi Sunak’s version of conservatism lurches from one disappointment to another and looks doomed to an electoral drubbing next year, we must now accept the next ‘least worst option’ – a Keir Starmer premiership.
The ever-so-grey Starmer, or ‘Captain Flip-Flop’ as the tories have rather ironically named him, is not exactly the country’s saviour. No, ‘new, New Labour’ is unlikely to be the political cavalry arriving in a swirl of silver bullets to immediately fix our broken Britain. But nevertheless they will just have to do.
Some may say that the choice between Sunak and Starmer is like choosing your fate via firing squad on the one hand or drowning on the other in that both options are spectacularly unappealing. As leaders go though, I reckon it’s more a choice between watching paint dry until you die, or attending a two-day PropTech conference such is the excitement of either.
But so to housing and a quick recap on the Conservative’s record. Below I list the successes that this government has had over its 13 year tenure:
There you go. It’s a very short list with housing targets missed by light-years, and then those same housing targets eradicated. An assault on landlords resulting in 35% less rental stock availability. A social sector in crisis with the only growth seemingly being ceiling mold. House prices dipping (no, not crashing) for the first time in fifteen years. Mortgage costs hiked. More housing ministers in post than they’ve had years in government. And planning reform as well as rental reform both bottled over and over again. There’s nothing much to be proud of here really.
Veering leftwards, the Labour party has not been in office nationally since 2010. Their record on housing was that Tony Blair oversaw the biggest rise in property values of any administration in British history – and that’s either fabulous or outrageous depending upon who you are. Plus, under John Healey as Housing Minister in 2008/9 Labour achieved the worst year for new-build output in decades.
The upshot of all of this is that all political parties and all politicians are quite obviously incompetent where our sector is concerned albeit that you wouldn’t know it from the gratuitous headlines, rhetoric and gaslighting that we see regularly – but outcomes, or rather the lack of them, do speak for themselves.
Ok, let’s be positive for a moment and take things at face value especially where Labour’s promises are concerned.
At their recent party conference a number of pledges were made by Keir Starmer and his deputies in amongst all of the glitter:
- 1.5m homes to be built over five years
- Reform of the green belt to strip out the bits that aren’t green and to relabel as ‘grey’ for development
- Planning reform including more power to devolved mayors and fast-track approval of brownfield sites
- The ‘biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation’
- New Towns
- First ‘dibs’ on new developments for first time buyers
This all sounds great, right? But it always does, yet rarely does the delivery actually match the announcement.
The problem is that politicians know nothing about housing and neither do civil servants. The subject is an easy political ball to kick around, but decades of under-performance illustrate my point that the gap between headline and housing outcome has become ever wider.
Will Labour build more houses than the Conservatives? Well on the basis that it is the housebuilders that decide what is built where and when, you could argue that Starmer’s aspirations are not something that he has any control over. So probably not.
My personal opinion is that Labour are at least thinking in the right direction and I say this as someone that wouldn’t naturally vote Labour.
Re-assessing the green belt is sensible as is standing up to the whingeing NIMBYS in our communities that as a vocal minority throttle development that is so important so as to allow their own children and grandchildren to ever buy or rent a home locally.
New towns are sorely needed. The last one formally designated was in 1970 yet the UK population has grown by 12 million people since. With big developments come huge S106 and CIL monies and therefore more doctors’ surgeries, rail stations and schools.
But unless Labour removes the obstacle of opportunistic politics and of housebuilding output being controlled by, in effect, ten PLC builders – then no progress will be made. Again.
The solution is surely a national housebuilding corporation with a ten year mandate and a fixed strategy uninterrupted by politicos. And maybe a Housing Secretary that is not an elected member of parliament but a seasoned private sector expert with one goal and one goal alone – not just to get re-elected at any cost but to deliver those 300,000 homes each year that successive politicians have promised us but have not produced since the year the Monkees first sang ‘I’m a Believer’. Oh the irony.
As for landlords, a bumpy ride is ahead as Labour falls over itself to ban so-called ‘no fault evictions’ and will probably squeeze them ever further in order to appease the party’s base that sees all such investors as ‘greedy’ and ‘evil’ whilst forgetting that private landlords prop up the absence of housing stock that they as politicians are themselves responsible for. Tax rises beckon not just on landlords but on overseas buyers and second home owners too.
Instead, Starmer & Co should announce tax breaks for landlords as an incentive for them to invest in providing more rental stock for an expanding population. Because isn’t it obvious that if successive governments cannot provide enough homes for Britain then it should welcome landlords stepping in to do so rather than trying to continually disincentivise them?
This would be the right thing to do practically but not ideologically and therefore, sadly, I rather think that in six years’ time a Starmer Downing Street will look very much like the one that Sunak was forced to leave behind.
Russell Quirk is co-founder of ProperPR and a regular media commentator on property and politics
