Thoughts for Tory housing radicals

We're all just trying to figure out the guys who did this

I’ve been writing about the effects of housing on Britain’s young recently, which has been absolutely soul crushing. This is how doompoasters must feel all the time, and I hate it. It’s like watching a loved one drown because you’ve forgotten how to swim. 

In CapX I first rolled out the idea that the housing crisis was creating a helot class out of the propertyless. I expanded on that idea for The Critic, pointing out that the huge burdens and scant rewards Britain’s young are being offered gives them little incentive to stay.  

But, as Twitter user Wrath of God pointed out, this work was ‘basically just elegant analysis of why Tom Jones is wearing a hot dog costume.’ To understand that reference you’ll need to watch this (and you can thank me later): 

One of the fun things about being a councillor is I get to try and figure out who did this (and what to do about it). Being a councillor gives you a modest little platform to speak from, but it’s modest enough that I can still run a nice line in thinkpieces on what I’d like to see done differently without getting into too much trouble. 

I was listening to David Runciman’s marvellous History of Ideas podcast on Montaigne this week. Montaigne warned against ascending the political ladder because your ability to take a step back and analyse a situation gradually diminishes as you ascend the ladder. The risks become so great and the high stakes become so unavoidable that, eventually, you lose not only your freedom of thought but your freedom to manoeuvre as well.* Being a councillor is very much bottom rung of the ladder, which gives me plenty of freedom; frankly, I’m just not important enough to the party for them to stop me challenging its’ direction. 

One of the directions it needs challenging on is the housing crisis. To some extent, I am trying to figure out the guy who did this. But I’m not the only one in a hot dog costume; the British housing system is coming to a crunch at the moment, but it is not solely this government's fault we don’t have enough housing. It is a shared policy failing of every government since around the mid-70s. That’s why we have 4 million missing homes, not a few thousand. 

Despite the very, very obvious problems arising as a result of our failure to building enough homes – and the fact that some of us warned of the open goal on housing - Conservatives have still been wrong-footed by Kier Starmer’s announcement that on housing he will take "tough decisions" on the green belt and "back the builders, not the blockers."  

Politically speaking, there’s nothing to gain by reproducing Labour’s policy, and party politics works largely on electoral advantage. So Starmer’s announcement means the Conservatives have to draw up or try to outflank; the party needs to choose between nuclear-tipped NIMBYism or housing radicalism. 

Notwithstanding actual policy detail, the fact that Starmer has seized the initiative places pro-housing tories (like me) in extra difficulty. The party knows there are votes in NIMBYism; backbench Conservative MPs are happy to post their latest efforts to block housing because they know, as sure as God wears sandals, it’s going to win them votes.

How, then, do we advocate inside the party for more housing now and take on entrenched NIMBYism? The only way to cure the sickness within is to make it clear that enabling home ownership is not just economically beneficial and morally right but politically advantageous too - as Pierre Pollivere is doing in Canada. Pro-housing Tories must become housing radicals (in the sense that we should stand on a platform of home ownership and mean it) and outflank Starmer by proposing a something a little more substantial, and a little more radical, than trite cliches about ‘the right homes in the right places.’ 

We can start with the state’s role in housebuilding. For the last decade the Government’s sole housebuilding policy has been Help to Buy, a demand-side policy that relies on the private sector to deliver private homes. The first problem with the policy, as I’ve written a few times now, is that it didn’t work (and it might be even worse the second time around). House prices were pushed up, young people were forced out. But I question whether founding the government’s entire housebuilding policy on delivering private homes via the private sector should be enough for Tory housing radicals.

First off, Britain needs homes - and badly. But it does not just need private homes. It needs homes of different tenures; just eight per cent of properties are now affordable on housing benefit, the waiting list for social housing stands at over one million, and rents have risen 20 per cent in just three years. In purely economic terms, Government now spends £23.4bn a year on housing benefit.  That’s more than the MoJ, DfT or the Home Office – simply to enable people to live in a housing market that doesn’t function properly. If the party comes down on the side of NIMBYism, how much more money will we have to spend papering over the cracks of a market with insufficient supply? 

The reliance on the private sector, meanwhile, means the housing supply isn’t shielded from economic pressures. Hence the years following the Global Financial Recession 2010-2015 saw some of the lowest housebuilding rates since World War Two.  

Since, housebuilding has stagnated as a result of Covid-19 and inflationary pressures. Relying solely on the private sector to deliver private homes is placing too many eggs in a single basket, and too much faith in a system that time and time again has failed to deliver enough housing. 

Tory radicals should look back at the past masters for inspiration; to Skelton, to Macmillan. Right now, we are building only a relatively smaller number of private homes than we were in the post-war glory days. The real driving in the fall in housebuilding is the complete collapse of local authority-built housing. For a few years after the war, local authorities were responsible for the majority of housebuilding; but even after Britain had rebuilt itself, until the end of the 70’s, LAs regularly built over 150,000 homes every year. 

Re-instituting an extensive and intensive programme of housebuilding, either delivered or backed by local (and perhaps national) government, would shield delivery from economic pressures. At the same time, it could reduce the social housing waitlist and the cost of housing benefit by building the social housing Britain is so desperately in need of. There is not even any particular need to keep this housing in government hands, should conservatives find a role for government that large objectionable; the dream of a property-owning democracy could be reborn by reinstituting Right to Buy on these homes, providing affordable homes to those in need and government with a source of income that could be ringfenced against future housing delivery.

But none of this is possible to deliver with the current planning system. In fact, very little of Starmer’s plans are likely to be possible with the current planning system, either. We have to rethink whether our wholesale commitment to a discretionary planning system is suitable – or even capable - of delivering the housing outcomes we need. As Centre for Cities notes; 

The English planning system causes this shortage of homes by making it very difficult to build, in two ways. First, it imposes explicit bans on new construction in large parts of the country – by far the most important and costly of these is the green belt, which exists to block the growth of the country’s most economically important cities and large towns. 

Second, the planning process for almost all of the remaining land is highly discretionary with nearly all significant decisions made case-by-case. The uncertainty this creates in the development process reduces the number of new homes and commercial buildings that are built, as it is possible to propose a new development that complies with the local plan and nevertheless have it rejected. 

Moving away from a purely discretionary system may not be my idea, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad one. One of the other nice things about being a councillor is that I can openly admit I don’t know whether it is. I have the freedom to acknowledge I just haven’t done enough reading to be particularly well-informed about it, and my position is lowly enough that I can do that without damaging what little standing I have.  

But one thing I do know is that for all the intellectualising, the YIMBY movement is lacking a serious ground game. Think pieces, substacks and column inches may be important, sure, but they mean little compared to the fact Janet, ‘the most powerful person in British politics’ has just logged on to the council website to log her third planning objection this month. They also mean little without recognition that an immigration rate of over a million is driving demand up and buying power down. We need to deal with all these things, but we also have to deal in the here and now. That means getting on and delivering as much housing as we can in the world we inhabit; it means backing planning applications, turning up to meeting, lobbying your councillors - even standing for council yourself. Deeds exist, and doers must be found.  

* (I am 100% aware of how ridiculous it is for a local councillor to use Montaigne to frame a discussion about his Substack but I am a ridiculous figure, so here we are)