Theoretically, the next General Election (GE) need not take place until January 2025. In reality, a raft of political pundits are saying that it increasingly looks like this May, following a budget in which the Government cuts taxes and sees inflation fall nearer back to its target 2% (ignoring Jan’s upward blip back to 4%). Oh, and when the Bank of England has had a chance to cut interest rates – the first cut of many predicted for this year.
If a May election is the Government’s plan, it would explain why it seems to already be in campaign mode. In the autumn of last year, it was making a hoo-hah about being on the side of the motorist; this New Year it has so far been all about the Rwanda scheme. No doubt it will soon be about the economy if inflation and interest rates behave, and there’s tax cuts to be made.
Pundits suggesting that this will make any difference to the outcome of the GE (a Labour win predicted at the time of writing) are far and few between, which is why Labour’s election tactic at the moment is seemingly to do nothing; and let the Conservatives bicker themselves into the ground.
There is, however, one battleground on which Labour has staked its flag and has done so rather consistently. And that is housing.
We saw (PHPDs passim) at its conference an emphasis on housing, and Starmer has repeatedly said that Labour will be a builder, not a blocker. He restated this position in his New Year speech on January 4th.
Among the other promises, he offered “a reformed planning system no longer blocking the homes, infrastructure and investment we need,” and to “bulldoze through planning red tape and get Britain building.”
Whether he will be able to pursue that line in the face of his own NIMBY MPs if, as and when he takes office is another day’s work. Yet he has obviously identified housing as a hot electoral topic and that has to be good for the sector, regardless of your political persuasion, given the neglect it has received elsewhere.
It might not be the only or defining one, as we’re seeing in the to and fro about immigration, but that matters less to young people – especially young people stuck living at home or paying crazy rents and with no prospect of home ownership. As Henry Hill said in the Telegraph, of all places, last October: if Labour get housing right “Starmer can make sure no young person ever votes Tory again”.
That alone should be enough to galvanize the Government into some sort of action plan to favour housebuilders and housebuilding and, if it doesn’t, then it seems Starmer is ready to do a job for us instead.
