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| Conservative flagship housing policies have yet to deliver anything even resembling an affordable housing market where young people can get their foot on the ladder. |
When the phrase "No Deposit Required" started trending on social media on Sunday, there was a rumble of excitment. Unfortunately, it was not trending for the reason that people, momentarily, thought it was (it was actually a gambling promotion).
The mistaken belief was that it was a brave new housing policy announcement, with an level of ambition that might make a real dent in the housing crisis. A policy that might really help make home ownership affordable.
The trend quickly became filled with the same joke - "I thought this was a housing policy, but..." - and, for a moment, seven years of government teetered on the brink of being reduced to a single bitter meme.
That disappointment is dangerous for such a weak government and, that it spread so easily in a free form moment, is a big threat to a party that relies so heavily on well practised, old media control over the message and tone of politics.
The Conservatives rely on controlling public discourse and their grip is slipping. That is a sign of Conservative failure, symbolised by Philip Hammond's Autumn Budget in which he promised help to young people toward owning homes.
The breakdown of his signature offer of cutting stamp duty for first time buyers, however, is a narrow policy whose benefit will mostly be helpful to those who are already home owners - a key Conservative audience - and beyond a narrow group, may actually lead to homes being more expensive.
While Hammond put his faith in tinkering around the edges, with some subtle shifts in regulation, it's clear that out there in the public imagination tackling the growing crisis of affordable housing is going to take bigger ideas.
The fact that there was excitment about a policy of no deposits when buying a house - a policy that would come at an extraordinary cost, even for renters - shows just how far the May-Hammond government is from the scale of response the public is expecting.
For Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, that will be music to their ears - perhaps a sign that their message is getting through or has a receptive audience. However, Labour is not free from singeing by the burn of this particular trending topic.
Housing is an issue that no party has adequately dealt with - not even William Beveridge, when he drew his ideas for the welfare system, had an answer for housing.
Homes are too expensive and the growth and security of incomes is low and sliding. Land and property remain archaic, rentier dominated, sectors - cartels like great spiders sat in webs in the midst our economy, catching our resources, extracting and hoarding them.
Conservative failures and broken promises have fed disappointment that risks turning bitter. Progressives must take seriously the need to unravel these webs, and push out the fat lazy spiders, on which so much of our economic potential is snagged.
References
'Budget 2017: Cautious Hammond has salves not solutions, as Budget falls short of action'; in The Alternative; 22 November 2017.
Brian Milligan's 'Budget 2017: What does the stamp duty change mean?'; on the BBC; 22 November 2017.
Jules Birch's 'The problem of rent: why Beveridge failed to tackle the cost of housing - Some 70 years after his groundbreaking report, housing professionals are still trying to solve the problems Beveridge identified'; in The Guardian; 22 November 2012.
Laurie Macfarlane's 'It’s time to call the housing crisis what it really is: the largest transfer of wealth in living memory'; on Open Democracy; 13 November 2017.
Laurie Macfarlane's 'To solve the housing crisis, we need to fix our broken land economy'; on Open Democracy; 23 August 2017.
Laurie Macfrarlane & Adam Ramsay's 'Podcast: to rebalance Britain’s economy, we must rethink land and housing economics'; from Open Democracy; 6 March 2017.
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