Natalie Elphicke’s decision to join Labour is mind-boggling, Starmer was a plonker, berk, nitwit, numpty and a stupid git to accept her

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 15th May 2024)

Last week we learned that young people are not familiar with certain insults that were common in my youth. They don’t know what ‘plonker’, ‘berk’, ‘nitwit’, ‘numpty’ and ‘git’ mean. These are just the polite ones. I was reprimanded once by the then Mayor of Brighton for calling another councillor an “a…”. I can’t say the word as this is a family newspaper!

Labour activists, especially here in Sussex where Labour is pitching itself as a fresh alternative to the Conservatives, will be at a loss for words to describe their bewilderment, confusion, perplexity, bafflement, bemusement, puzzlement and befuddlement that Sir Keir Starmer has welcomed the hard right Tory MP, Natalie Elphicke, into the Labour Party.  Perhaps some are privately, and some not-so-privately, are calling Starmer a plonker, berk, nitwit, numpty and a stupid git for this mind-baffling decision.

When I first heard that Elphicke had defected to Labour I had to check the date. It was May 8th, not April 1st. I couldn’t have been more surprised had Nigel Farrage joined George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain!

But what a pyrrhic victory it is proving to be for Starmer. He will have relished the momentary befuddlement of Tory MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions when they realised that Elphicke had defected to Labour. Her following Lee Anderson to Reform UK was a more likely scenario.

Within minutes Labour MPs were expressing incredulity that one of the most right-wing Conservatives MPs, a member of the European Research Group, someone who was staunchly pro-Brexit, had been so warmly welcomed into their party.  Elphicke is not a good fit for the Labour Party. Just a year ago she wrote an article calling Starmer “Sir Softie” and she accused Labour of wanting “open borders”. She wrote: “Not only have Labour got no plan of their own to tackle illegal immigration, they simply do not want to.” Now Labour is having to resist Tory calls for an enquiry into Elphicke’s past behaviour.

Listening to Labour front benchers’ feeble attempts to justify the decision to accept Elphicke’s defection has been painful in the extreme. A regular on the airwaves, Anneliese Dodds, lost whatever remaining personal credibility she had as she failed to explain away Elphicke’s gaslighting of the victims of her husband’s sexual assaults and harassment, victim-blaming them. While Elphicke got the mildest censure from Parliament for this, surely someone with her record should have no place in Labour.  Dodds, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equality, should be calling out Elphicke on this, not minimising it.

I often wonder why Labour fields lame performers such as Dodds, Pat McFadden and Jonathan Reynolds (the so-called Minister for the Today Programme). Does the party have a cunning plan to bore listeners into submission, believing that if we zone out before the end of their first sentence we won’t be left confused, perplexed, baffled, bemused, puzzled and befuddled by their tortuous non-answers. This strategy seems to be working as Labour extends its lead in the polls. Either that or, as is more likely, the Conservatives are now so discredited that not even a modern-day Churchill could possibly save them from their inevitable defeat come the general election. 

It won’t be this easy for Labour once in office. The banality of their spokespeople will be exposed. Fortunately Labour has some secret weapons who are not being utilised for fear of them looking dynamic and interesting when compared to Starmer himself. One is our own Peter Kyle who is intelligent, interesting, thoughtful, and charming in person and on the airwaves. 

As for the Green Party, the decision of their Brighton Pavilion candidate, Siân Berry, to resign from the Greater London Assembly a mere three days after being re-elected, will leave Londoners confused, perplexed, baffled … you get the idea. Labour activists are suggesting that it shows a lack of commitment, with some asking how can one support a candidate with so little staying power. But perhaps this is all part of a cunning plan by Berry. Gone at a stroke is her only source of income, but she is demonstrating her total commitment to Brighton Pavilion. It also shows her increasing confidence, supported by the polls and Labour fielding what appears to be a paper candidate, that she will retain the seat comfortably.

Back to Labour. Is there anyone that it wouldn’t accept as a member? Yes there is. While Starmer welcomes Elphicke with open arms, Britain’s first black woman MP, Diane Abbott, continues to be excluded. That alone suggests a lot about Starmer’s Labour Party. 

Any politicians who says “There is no magic money tree” is treating the electorate as children and idiots. And now Rachel Reeves is acting like a latterday snake oil saleswoman.

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 3rd April 2024)

Whenever politicians say “There is no magic money tree”, they are treating the electorate as children and idiots. And all who use this pathetic, empty phrase should forfeit the right to be regarded as serious politicians because it closes down legitimate debate on their political priorities.

The politician who most famously used the phrase was Theresa May in 2017 when attacking Jeremy Corbyn. It has subsequently been used by Rishi Sunak and, most recently, by Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner. Labour is also prone to say that the Conservatives have “maxed out the government’s credit card”, an equally stupid concept. The government does not have a credit card and government finances are not the same as those of a household, itself another simplistic and wrong concept favoured by politicians. Proof of this is that there is always money to fight wars.

The household comparison dates back to Margaret Thatcher who, as far back as the 1979 general election campaign, said: “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country”. Running a home and running the country are not the same, but what an inspired election slogan! 

There is nothing wrong with a country borrowing for investment, even at times of financial instability. What is not right is to borrow to fund tax cuts or day-to-day spending, at least in the long term. I can think of many occasions when nations, in the wake of economic turmoil, have borrowed to fund huge public investment.  One example, in the wake of the 1929 financial crash, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ that promoted economic recovery and put Americans back to work through Federal activism. New Federal agencies controlled agricultural production, stabilised wages and prices, and created a vast public works programme for unemployed people. 

The post-war Labour government, at a time of huge debt, made massive investment in creating the NHS, expansion of state education, the building of council housing, and so on. There was a bipartisan approach, not least in housing. During the 1950s, Churchill’s Conservative government delivered new council housing at a rate not seen before or since. Investment in public housing through subsidising the cost of building new homes pays for itself over the years, with lower rents and less public subsidy to help people meet overblown rents. The economics of investment in housing is actually very simple. Investment in bricks and mortar retains value, whereas rent subsidies do not. This bipartisan approach was broken by Margaret Thatcher who began the dismantling of the social housing sector through the politically popular but economically disastrous Right to Buy programme. 

A new bipartisan consensus in favour of financial austerity has been created following the election of the Cameron government in 2010, and Labour front benchers have meekly performed lemming impersonations by following the Conservatives (and until 2015, the Lib Dems) over the austerity cliff. Historians will look back at this era with astonishment – that the major parties were so economically short-sighted and inept that the wellbeing of the nation was sacrificed in the pursuit of power.

If, as expected, Labour forms the next government, it will have voluntarily tied its own hands by adopting Conservatives financial rules. Labour supporters are not enthused by the wooden and lacklustre Sir Keir Starmer – “Sir Crasharooney Snoozefest, the Human Bollard” as Boris Johnson called him. They are destined to be as disappointed by the failure of Labour in government as they have been appalled by the Conservative’s demolition derby antics. 

Following the 2007-08 global financial crisis, the country needed investment but got austerity. When the country needed “strong and stable Leadership” as promised by Theresa May, we had a succession of circus clowns prime ministers unable and unwilling to invest in public services or to control the privatised monopolies. Successive Conservatives promised growth but had absolutely no idea how to achieve it. Now Rachel Reeves, acting like a latterday snake oil saleswoman, promises growth but rules out investment (not least in housing), promoting a valueless and fraudulent remedy that is destined to fail.

Labour will win the forthcoming general election, not because the electorate has any high hopes that “things can only get better” (to quote the 1997 Blairite strap line) but because voters are sick to the back teeth of the chaos of Conservative ‘rule’. And when Labour inevitably fails in government, it will be responsible for a massive swing to the right, by-passing a Conservative Party in mortal decline, to Reform UK and, even more worryingly, to parties on the extreme right.

MPs and councillors have lost the plot about their true roles

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 14th February 2024)

When Winston Churchill was the Member of Parliament for Dundee between 1908 and 1922, it is said that he never visited the town. This was not uncommon at that time and many MPs would never visit their constituency between elections. The link with one’s constituency was merely a vehicle of convenience for gaining political office. How different it is today. MPs maintain constituency offices with a number of paid staff. When the House in sitting, the majority of MPs return to their constituencies on a Thursday evening, undertake constituency business on Friday and over the weekend, before returning to Westminster in time for Monday’s sitting.

It wasn’t until 1969 that MPs first received an allowance to employ a solitary secretary, and it wasn’t until the early 1970s that MPs began to make case work a major part of their role. This development was pioneered by Liberal candidates and MPs who set up Liberal Focus Teams. This led to some notable successes in by-elections and was soon replicated by other parties. In Brighton Kemptown, the Conservative Andrew Bowden, who in 1970 won the seat from Labour’s Dennis Hobden, became a very familiar figure around the constituency and made this a safe Conservative seat for the next two decades. 

By contrast, his fellow Conservative in Brighton Pavilion, Julian Amery, was rarely, if ever, seen in Brighton between elections. This prompted a letter to the Evening Argus asking whether Mr Amery was in fact dead since he had not been seen in the constituency since the previous election. Mr Amery responded that he was elected to represent his electorate in parliament, not in Brighton.

Today all MPs aim to be familiar figures in their towns, villages or cities. All advertise regular ‘surgeries’ where they meet with constituents and take up issues on their behalf, including planning matters and neighbour disputes. They will advocate on behalf of their constituents about housing need and disrepair, traffic and parking problems, school admissions and registration with doctor surgeries. In Brighton and Hove potholes, refuse collection and weeds on the pavements have demanded time and attention from MPs who are supported by a team of constituency caseworkers. If the truth be told, it is these staff who do most of the casework on behalf of the MP.

Back in Westminster, the role of MPs is to scrutinise legislation and to hold the government to account but this has been watered down as MPs have increasingly become mere voting fodder for their party leaders. 

This arrangement where MPs have become glorified and well-paid social workers is, of course, a ridiculous nonsense. MPs have no direct authority and little expertise on most casework matters. They have no responsibility for schools, housing, street cleaning, traffic, parking, and planning matters. 

Council leader, Bella Sankey, doing the job of a council worker – this is not what councillors are elected to do (Photo: The Argus)

On the other hand, local councillors are responsible for all these. But local councillors, too, have lost their way. They debate and pass resolutions on national and international matters, none of which is the responsibility of local councils. Meanwhile, they have highly publicised action days where they make a big show on social media of them removing graffiti and cutting back weeds. This is not the role of a local councillor. Councils employ staff to do these tasks, and whenever I see a councillor having one of these action days, especially when they are part of the administration, it is a signal that they as councillors have spectacularly failed in their role and they are trying to look good while merely papering over the cracks of failing services.

The role of councillors should be the setting of strategies, priorities and standards for council officers to implement, and ensuring that these strategies are carried out. In Brighton and Hove we see the complete reversal of roles, where officers take a lead on strategic matters and all-too-often police their councillors’ actions and statements. Whereas councillors should be the representatives of their voters, there is a breed of council staff called ‘community engagement officers’. I have witnessed these officers moderating what a councillor can say at community meetings and councillors deferring to them. 

Brighton and Hove City Council is having to find cuts . I would suggest that councillors get rid of community engagement officers and that they resume that role. While they are about it, they should clear out the overwhelming majority of strategy officers, policy co-ordinators, and community safety, diversity and inclusion officers. They make the council look busy and might make some people with vested interests feel good but they rarely benefit the people of the city.  

Are the Conservatives on course to lose all seats in Sussex?

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 25th October 2023)

The King accepts the resignation of Liz Truss and asks Rishi Sunak to form a government

Today is the anniversary of Rishi Sunak becoming Prime Minister. Earlier in the day, the outgoing PM, Liz Truss, had been to the Palace to see the new King, just 49 days after she had flown to Balmoral where the late Queen had invited her to form a new government. Following years of tradition, the King asked Sunak, who had been elected the leader of the Conservative Party the previous day, to take over.

The Conservatives are well-versed in forming governments. After all, they have had five prime ministers in just seven years. Sunak has lasted longer than Truss, but how much longer will he survive? There are already rumours that members of the Conservative Party are submitting letters to the Chair of their backbench committee calling for a vote of no confidence in him. 

It would be understandable if a combination of their lead in the polls, and last Thursday’s two by-election results in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth led Labour activists, MPs and the party’s leadership to believe that a Labour victory in the general election is now nailed on. They are probably right. However, the Labour leadership has had political-Botox that makes outward-showing signs of confidence impossible.

The Conservatives have dismissed the by-election results, saying that it is almost inevitable that sitting governments lose by-elections, and that there is still a year until the general election. Anything can happen between now and then.

But make no mistake, these by-election results were sensational even though Tamworth was a Labour seat until going Conservative in 2010. Mid Bedfordshire was the more remarkable result, overturning a Conservative majority of almost 25,000.

It is unlikely that Labour will hold Mid Bedfordshire come the general election. Worryingly for Labour, there was no groundswell of support for the Labour candidate. In fact, the Labour vote went down by 156 from the 2019 election. The Conservatives point to the low turnout, saying that it was their voters who just didn’t turn out and that there was no enthusiasm for Labour and its lacklustre leader, Sir Keir Starmer. A modest increase in turnout by Conservative voters next year will see it returning to its traditional blue.

Meanwhile, election-guru, Professor Sir John Curtis, points out that a failure to get your vote out is indicative of your party’s malaise. And that is certainly true for the Conservatives. Which Tory party activist in their right mind can feel any enthusiasm for the bumblings and fumblings of the current government. Like a wonky shopping trolley, they lurch from one crisis to another. 

Some in the current government make former minister Chris Grayling look vaguely competent. It was Grayling who destroyed the probation service, created chaos in the prison system, and awarded ferry contracts to a company with no ferries, a company that operates out of a harbour that cannot accommodate … ferries. Anyone would have thought Grayling was once in charge of the high-speed train initiative, HS2, that has gone over-budget by billions of Pounds and which the government is now curtailing. Wait a minute, Failing Grayling was once in charge of that, too.

The Covid enquiry is showing that we had a prime minister (Boris Johnson) who was initially disengaged. As Churchill said of the Americans, Johnson could always be relied on to do the right thing … once he had exhausted all other possibilities. He locked down too late, and unlocked too soon. He ridiculed Starmer saying that the Leader of the Opposition had wanted to cancel Christmas while he, as Prime Minister, wanted restrictions to be lifted. Yet only a few days later he had to do just what Starmer had called for. All this time he was loyally supported by his poodle Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

And in the last week or so we learned through the enquiry that Sunak, as Chancellor, launched the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ initiative in spite of misgivings by the government’s leading scientific advisers including Professor Dame Angela McLean who dubbed him ‘Dr Death the Chancellor’. 

For just a bit of fun, Election Maps U.K. applied the Tamworth result across the country. If the swing and result there were to be applied to every constituency, Labour would have a majority of 424 seats with 537 MPs, the Lib Dem’s 46, the Conservatives 29 and others 19. On this basis the Conservatives would win no seats whatsoever in Sussex. That won’t happen, of course, but Sunak will have to pull one giant rabbit out of his magicians hat to avoid a humiliating defeat next year.

My Political Predictions for 2023: The Return of Joker Johnson?

(This item first appeared in my Argus column on 4th January 2023)

Had I been writing this column a year ago, I could not have come close to predicting the year we have had: three prime ministers, and four chancellors. The passing of The Queen was not a surprise although it would have been unseemly to have predicted it.

I would have predicted a rather mundane year in politics. The previous few years had seen turmoil following the Brexit vote, the resignation of David Cameron, the promise of ‘strong and stable’ government by the ever-increasingly weak and feeble Theresa May, and the elevation of Joker Johnson to the office of prime minister. His 80 seat majority at the election in December 2019 should have ensured a period of relative calm and even stable government for the next five years.

Harold MacMillan, when asked by a journalist to identify the greatest challenge to his administration, sagely replied: “Events, my dear boy, events.” Had Johnson been asked what he saw as his greatest challenge, he might have waffled about learning from the conspiracy led by Gaius Cassius, Decimus and Brutus in 44 BC, before ruffling his hair and referencing the Ides of March.

What Johnson might have identified was ‘events’ and his tendency to self-implode. The event was the onset of Covid-19. While his remaining cheerleaders continue to say he got all the big decisions right, he did so (to paraphrase Churchill’s view of the Americans) having exhausted all the other possibilities. Through his delays and lack of focus, especially in the early months, many more people died than might have had we had a serious prime minister.

Boris Johnson’s greatest weakness was, and remains, Boris Johnson. As Prime Minister his ability to self-implode could no longer be covered up by his self-deprecating humour, his outright denials and his shameless lying.

He rapidly became such a liability that his own party, including so-called Red Wall MPs who owed their election to the Clown at Number 10, turned on him. His humiliating downfall was as rapid as his ascension to the top job.

His parting words at his last Prime Minister’s Questions was: “Hasta la vista, baby.” Oh, how everyone laughed. The joker to the end, baby. But it wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Terminator 2 reference to ‘baby’ that we should note. It was what went before: Hasta la vista / See you later.

Johnson still has unfinished business. He has had a lifelong ambition to be prime minister, and to lose it, as he sees it, so unfairly and so prematurely, means that a return should not be written off. The fact that he seriously contemplated another run for the top job when Liz Truss resigned, shows the depth of his arrogance, even his delusion. 

So what will happen in 2023. The Conservatives are on course for a Poll Tax-scale defeat in May’s local elections. Parliamentary by-elections, even in the safest Conservative-held seats, will be lost. Rishi Sunak, who was chosen by the Conservative faithful because he isn’t Liz Truss and he isn’t Boris Johnson, will find his party divided against him. I predict that he will be gone by the end of 2023 or early 2024, to be replaced in the run-up to the general election by one Boris Johnson. Hasta la vista, baby, as he said.

And in the United States, don’t bet against the return of the other Blonde Bombshell, Donald J Trump. I wonder what odds you could get that in 2024 there will be, once again, a Prime Minister Johnson and a President Trump. What a nightmare scenario.

Locally, I predict that Labour will form the administration in Brighton and Hove following this May’s local elections. I would even suggest that the party will have an overall majority, even if it does have to rely on the casting vote of the Mayor-elect, Jackie O’Quinn.

It has happened before, in 1986, when another Jackie, Jackie Lythell, became the Mayor of the old Brighton Borough Council when Labour had overall control of the Council thanks to her casting vote. 

The scale of Labour’s win in the recent Wish Ward by-election defied most people’s expectations. While by-elections are not reliable pointers to what happens in normal elections, there were some worrying indicators for both the Conservatives and the Greens. Wish is a ward which has had two very active, high profile and respected Conservative councillors, but their candidate was well-and-truly hammered by Labour who polled double their votes. 

At any other point in the last twelve years, the Greens might have challenged for this seat, but they came a distant third. Some Green supporters may have ‘lent’ their votes to Labour, but such is its dominance in the polls, Labour will be looking to pick up many more votes, and seats, from the hapless Green administration in the city, and thereby gain control of the Council.

Diaries and journals: an inside view of politics, relationships and life

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 14th December 2022)

Do you want an idea for a Christmas present? Why not give someone a diary? I am not talking about a little book to note down upcoming commitments and birthdays, but journals of events as they happen.

I am a devotee of diaries, political ones preferably. I can claim to have read every word of all nine volumes of Tony Benn’s diaries as well as the salacious diaries of the former Conservative MP, Alan Clark. Most recently I have chuckled my way through the insider-gossip contained in The Diaries of an MP’s Wife by Sasha Swire who was on the inside of the Cameron set.

I now have Something Sensational to Read in the Train by Giles Brandreth on my Kindle. It is everything you would expect from an entertainer and raconteur of the class of Brandreth. He oozes self-confidence and, even from his younger days, has no doubts about his personal qualities and abilities. He unashamedly names-drop on every page. As an eleven-year-old he met the great T S Elliott after a carol service. He quaintly wrote: “T. S. Eliot was there and told me that I read very well! I told him that I am going to learn his poem ‘Macavity the Mystery Cat’ by heart. He was pleased. He put his hand on my head. I like him and he likes me.”

I hope that this year Father Christmas will bring me A Pocketful of Happiness by Richard E Grant. When Joan, his wife of almost 40 years, died in 2021, she set him a challenge: find a pocketful of happiness in every day. This diary is his response to her challenge. I listened to his recent Desert Island Discs and was moved to tears as he spoke about Joan, and he had me laughing in equal measure. I hope to spend Boxing Day with Richard E. 

We are fortunate to have had a number of first rate diarists in recent years that provide us with a contemporaneous perspective of the political affairs of the day – and I don’t mean sexual peccadilloes. Love or loathe them as individuals, the diaries of people like Benn, Clark, Swire, Barbara Castle, Alastair Campbell, Chris Mullen and even Piers Morgan are ‘must-read’ tomes for any student of politics.

For thirty years or so I have attempted to maintain a journal. Repeated new year’s resolutions fell away by mid-February after which I have written only sporadic entries. It has only been in recent years that I have embedded the discipline of writing a daily entry.

I regret that there were periods when I didn’t have the discipline to write, or I was too exhausted, or I felt it would not be appropriate to record events, such as when I did jury service.  For reasons of confidentiality and to comply with data regulation, I have not made a record on my work at BHT Sussex. I have referenced non-controversial matters like the development of our shipping container homes project in Brighton, the setting up of the Choir With No Name, and the thrill I still get whenever I see the bus celebrating fifty years of the organisation “changing lives across Sussex”.

The software I use has two great features – I can dictate entries rather than type them, and I can see all previous entries made on a particular date. Of course my journal will be of little interest to anyone other than me. As I read entries written in previous years I am reminded of many happy occasions but struck by how sad it is to be a lifelong supporter of Stoke City FC as I record one disappointing result after another!

I regret that I didn’t make a daily entry as the Covid pandemic emerged and took hold. It was such an unreal experience for us all, not least when the first national lockdown was announced. Personal social histories at a time of national and international crises can provide future generations with an invaluable flavour of how events were experienced.

From mid-November 2020 I have made daily entries, including reflections on how the government responded, or failed to respond in a timely fashion, to surges in infections resulting in avoidable Covid-related deaths. I don’t disguise my revulsion at the  gung-ho approach taken by Boris Johnson, usually doing the right thing only after he had exhausted all other possibilities (as Churchill once said of the Americans). When I hear apologists of this most appalling of prime ministers say that he got all the big decisions right, I want to scream.

Perhaps this year you can give yourself a combined Christmas and New Year’s present by starting to write your own journal. I love writing mine, enjoy rereading it, and hopefully someone may, one day, find my musings of some interest.

Please, Prime Minister, can we have some grown-up housing policies?

Earlier this month Boris Johnson gave a speech in Blackpool where he said he would “turn benefits to bricks“ by allowing people on benefits to put that money towards the cost of a mortgage.

At the time I was not particularly complimentary, saying that the proposals were “stupid, ill-thought through, and harmful.” (Note to self: I must stop sitting on the fence on issues such as this!)

Has the government learned anything from recent history? I draw your attention to policy disasters in housing over recent decades, not least in the two years before the 2008 banking collapse when the most popular banks sold over 200,000 sub-prime mortgages.

Last week in parliament it was revealed that most people in receipt of housing benefit will not be able to take advantage of Johnson’s ‘benefit to bricks’ plan. Who would have thought?  David Rutley, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, admitted that the plan will likely impact on just a limited number of people. He said: “There are five million in receipt of housing support, and though we know that it is likely most will not be in a position to take up the new policy, it removes a barrier that currently prevents thousands of families from buying their own home.”

That is a most optimistic spin on a ridiculous policy and damns it by faint praise. It must be excruciating for intelligent, thoughtful ministers required to defend policies dreamt up in the playground that is the Prime Minister’s mind.

Experts have said that in areas where house prices are high, such as Brighton and Hove, it is unlikely that universal credit payments will be enough to allow anyone at all on benefits to buy a home. There is also a deafening silence from lenders as to whether they would be willing to be part of this scheme.

This is a policy that raises hopes only to see them dashed on the rocks of reality.

There have been other government housing proposals in recent weeks, including the extension of the Right to Buy to housing association tenants that are, frankly, ludicrous and unachievable. Housing associations are not public bodies. Their house building programmes are backed by billions of Pounds of private borrowing with loan covenants based on rental income forecasts over thirty or forty years. Financial institutions have a charge on the very homes that the government wants to be sold off cheaply.

The commitment to extend the Right to Buy is likely to be as hollow as previous promises to do this. The National Housing Federation has raised concerns with ministers while the Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, has said that he wants to ‘seduce’ housing associations to take part, but has said that no organisation will be forced to comply with the proposal.

As someone who works for a housing association, it is unlikely that I will allow myself to be seduced by the delectable Michael Gove, tempting though that might be. I won’t let him have his wicked way with me because selling social housing is wicked. We already have an affordability and supply crisis on an unprecedented scale. The selling off of housing association homes will only make this situation even worse.

Over 40% of council houses that have been sold are now let out in the private rented sector with rents four or five times the level of previous social rents. This has been a major contributing factor to the spiralling cost of housing benefit – an all-too-predictable consequence of the failure of successive governments, of all colours, to build council housing.

There used to be a bi-partisan approach to house building. Let’s not forget that it was a Conservative government in the 1950s, with Winston Churchill as Prime Minister and Harold MacMillan as Housing Minister, that built a record 350,000 home a year.

I have seen nothing in Boris Johnson’s statement, nor in the housing measures in the Queen’s Speech, that gives me any confidence whatsoever that the government is serious about addressing housing’s affordability and supply crisis that has bedevilled this country for far too long. 

Housing policy should not be a short-term, vote-grabbing activity designed to appease restless backbenchers. 

Appeasing backbenchers and tinkering around with failed housing policies is no way for a government to behave. It is far too important for the country and for people in housing need. Housing should be where people live, not a political football, nor seen merely as an investment opportunity.

A serious solution to the housing crisis requires long-term strategic planning and, if we are going to get truly affordable homes, a massive investment in the building of social housing and an end to the Right to Buy.

In short, we need a return to grown-up housing policies.

My reaction to the Queen’s Speech

The Queen delivered her speech today (11th May). Of course the words are not written by her but by the Prime Minister. In this post I comment on two aspects – housing and training, two issues close to our work at BHT Sussex.

The Queen’s Speech represents yet another missed opportunity to increase the supply of accommodation that people can afford, and that as a result the affordability crisis will continue to get worse.

The government is proposing to replace case-by-case assessments of planning applications with a new zoning system. It is claimed that this will speed up the planning process. In New Zealand, where this has been tried, it produced nothing tangible other than rows between politicians and communities about zoning.

There are problems with the planning system, but simply making it easier to get planning permission is not the solution.  There are already 1.1 million unbuilt homes with planning permission.

There is a crisis relating to the lack of affordable homes.  There is no crisis for expensive homes.  Cranes on the skylines of towns and cities provide evidence that there is a thriving market for investment in top-of-the-range houses.  But these homes do not address local housing need.

The current investment model is not working. We need social housing, preferably council houses.  There was no housing crisis until the 1980’s. Until then there was a cross-party consensus in favour of council house building.  There is no doubt that there were problems with council housing, but the same is true today with private sector house builders constructing homes on flood plains and using flammable cladding.

Government housing policy looks at the demand side with policies such as Help to Buy. The Queen’s Speech made a commitment to extend costly home ownership schemes that do nothing about increasing supply while at the same time adding to house price inflation.  Successive governments, of all colours, have failed on the supply side where a massive stimulus is needed, such as made by the Churchill government in the 1950’s when Harold Macmillan was the Housing Minister.

We need government investment into homes in clean, green communities that tackle both the housing and climate crises.

While welcoming the commitment to skills and education, I question whether the plans for skills and education will deliver what is needed in a post-covid world.  

The question is whether the government will contract out this initiative to large multi-national organisations as it did with the Work Programme (a previous training scheme under the Cameron Coalition government that failed to meet many of its objectives) which wasted billions of pounds and did little to increase human and social capital. It is local, community-based organisations that are best placed to engage with disadvantaged communities and to deliver effective training.

There are currently 7 million people, 16% of the population, with poor literacy skills.  This is more than just about reading and writing.  It is about communication and digital literacy.  Over the years to come, people will need better communication skills to engage with employers as interviews and working will increasingly be online.  They already need better skills to interact with government regarding pensions and to engage with the benefit system.  More and more services are now online.

---

“Build, build, build” says the Prime Minister. But his announcement actually takes us backwards.

I’ve often wondered why politicians make announcements that they must surely know will fall apart within hours. Yesterday the Prime Minister launched his “build, build, build” approach to recovery. There was a focus on housing within his speech. He announced that £12.2 billion would be made available for 180,000 affordable homes for ownership and rent over the next eight years.

This number seemed familiar and later in the day the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government confirmed that the £12.2 billion had been announced at the budget and this latest announcement is not new money at all. The only difference is that the £12.2 billion is now spread over eight years rather than the five years announced in the budget.

I think that equates to a cut of 37%% per annum.

And as for “build, build, build”, the key issue is what you build.  We don’t need more luxury, top of the range homes.  We don’t need more homes for sale.  We don’t need to speed up the planning process – there are hundreds of thousand homes for which planning permission has been granted but haven’t been built.

We need homes that people can afford to rent before we build anything else.  Remember, in the 1950s it was a Conservative government, led by Boris Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, who asked Harold Macmillan to lead a house building programme never seen before.  It build more than 300,000 houses in a year. Macmillan saw that council housing was the quickest, if far from the best way of increasing the number of houses.

We can now build better homes than were built in the 1950s, but council housing is likely to be the best way in meeting need.

(Footnote: This article on the ConservativeHome website, ‘How Macmillan build 300,000 homes in a Year‘, is worth reading).

 

(Update 02/07/20: Since I posted this item the government has confirmed that the money announced will be spent over 5 years and not the 8 as announced.  The amount announced by the Prime Minister remains at £12.2 billion.  This is not new money but repeats the announcement in the budget earlier in the year).

Useless announcements in Westminster and Whitehall that will do nothing to address the housing crisis

“Never in the history of housing policy, has so much been announced by so many, whose achievements are so few”, as Winston Churchill never said.

The first announcement was the new job title for Sajid Javid, the Cabinet member responsible for housing, who went from being the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  Could it be that the purpose was to celebrate  that Mr Javid is responsible for the worst housing crisis in living memory.

On a similar note, Mr Javid’s department, the Department for Communities and Local Government, which has always been responsible for housing, is now to be called the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  Please, please someone, tell me that this is more than mere window dressing, that the policies responsible for the 60% increase in homeless households since 2010/11 will change.

Receiving less publicity, and not noticed by anyone other than housing anoraks like me, was the change in the name of the Homes and Communities Agency, the government quango responsible for social housing development and regulation.  It is now to be called Homes England.

At its launch this week, Sajid Javid said: “This government is determined to build the homes our country needs and help more people get on the housing ladder. Homes England will be at the heart of leading this effort.”

Actually, that was the key purposes of the Homes and Communities Agency.  But at least we are being presented with the appearance that something is being done.  Perhaps he is hoping that we will not notice that nothing is changing at all.

Lastly, the social housing regulation function of the Homes and Communities Agency is forthwith to be known by the cunning title ‘the Regulator of Social Housing’.  Where do they get this talent?

At least Fiona MacGregor, the Executive Director of Regulation, has the honesty to set out the huge anticipated impact of these changes when she wrote in a letter to housing associations this week: “This change is to the regulator’s operating name only and does not alter our regulatory framework, approach or powers and we will continue to promote a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver homes that meet a range of needs.”

Lots of people in Westminster and Whitehall have been very busy this week, earning their salaries by making sure that, at the end of the day, nothing is changing other than a few letterheads, business cards and signs outside government departments and quangos.  God forbid that they do anything meaningful to tackle the housing crisis.