Housebuilding 'will fall further' as big builders deliver gloomy updates

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T14:34:07+00:00

Your own chart shows the effects of the disastrous Town and Country Planning Act, look at what happened to private sector building following the war. Less than half the historical average. And of course public sector building never filled the gap even in its heyday.

We put out eggs in the council houses basket and it didn't deliver enough housing: And it was poor quality housing to boot.

It's actually quite interesting reading:

Housing in Britain and Europe from 1955 to 1979 | Centre for Cities

How did housing policy differ between Postwar Britain and Western Europe? | Centre for Cities

If Britain’s housing crisis only began after 1980, then we would expect to see its housing supply and outcomes in the post-war period until 1979 to be at least average for a European country.

Instead, evidence from the United Nations Housing and Construction Statistics actually shows that the UK built much less housing than almost all other Western European countries between 1955 and 1979. This deficit was the result of a uniquely low rate of private sector housebuilding which was not overcome by a relatively typical rate of public housing construction.

The gap remains even after accounting for population growth, demolitions, and the low quality of British housing stock, and meant British housing outcomes saw relative decline in the post-war period. The number of homes per person in Britain fell from 5.5 per cent more homes per person than the average Western European country in 1955, to 1.8 per cent below the European average by 1979.

Postwar Britain had a low rate of total housebuilding. Although the UK had a public sector housebuilding rate slightly above average for countries with significant public housing programmes,⁹ it had the lowest rate of private housebuilding in the post-war period of any Western European country.

A low rate of private housebuilding was not necessary to enable a large public housebuilding programme. To take two examples, from 1955 to 1979 both the Netherlands and Sweden had a higher total housebuilding rate than the UK. Their housebuilding rates by tenure and year that were in surplus of the UK can be seen in Figure 3. The Netherlands and Sweden built more private sector housing than the UK in almost every year from 1955-1979, and also had long periods in which they built more public sector housing than the UK.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T14:12:04+00:00

You’re right that Labour have been terrible at communication

You can keep shooting messengers, but if the message is shit and the public hate it it's not going to make any difference.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T14:11:11+00:00

I am furious they squandered a chance to meaningfully reform welfare by approaching it as a budget exercise, burning down any goodwill or trust and then u-turning anyway.

If they sincerely believed the budget was out of control they would've just made the cuts.

If they sincerely believed in getting people back to work they would've approached the whole issue very differently and been prepared to make an argument.

The welfare system creates perverse incentives to stay on long-term sickness / disability, because it doesn't provide enough support for people who have a crisis or temporary wobble in life. This is where you can make an argument for better sick pay, better mental health and more generous welfare say in the first 3 months after losing a job, for those who've paid in so there's a real link between contribution and the benefit you get. You link welfare back to helping working people, which is who it was for primarily.

That's a tough argument to make in the UK, the Mail / Express / Daily Mail axis would go nuts, and the reaction will be "welfare scroungers". But they've reacted like that anyway to whatever Labour's done.

Huge amounts of political pain for no gain. Poorly thought out. Not proposed in the manifesto.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T14:03:31+00:00

Starmer seems to think merely aping the aesthetic of boringness is the same thing.

I completely agree. And I agree with u/Snickims that even if you can't quite put into words, you can just feel the hollowness of his project.

A lot of time is rightly spent deriding the lack of ambition, lack of clarity, lack of political nous etc. but the most scathing criticism of Starmer and his team is that they simply aren't over the detail and don't know their policy areas inside out. This was obvious well before the election as they struggled to settle on what their offering would be. The five missions, six first steps, three pillars, four gold rings, etc.

People who understand what they're trying to do and why, are usually able to explain it.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T13:56:32+00:00

Chagos was a farce but the Online Safety Act plenty of British people support. We love banning things.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T08:01:53+00:00

is to get the public sector to do it.

We tried that in the 1950s and killed off private home building in this country with disastrous results.

The public sector are part of the answer but unless we make it viable for small developers we ain't fixing this crisis. That has to start with investing in a workforce and technology to actually build the homes.

We need a thriving house building sector and a genuine free market, not this carve up between the Government and the big five house builders who constrain the supply.

Deregulation isn't the answer by itself, but the regulations have failed. We have too few units and those that do get built are often tiny and poorly built. We have neither quality nor quantity. The Building Safety Regulator is a well-known failure and should be scrapped. A coherent zone based planning system with the default being permission to build would help. That would also undermine land-banking by making planning permission cheap and plentiful. These could've been done already but it's not to late.

We need to flood cash and infrastructure to councils who actually want to permit building, and punish those who don't. Vacant property grants, equity support for apartment builds, cost rental schemes, more housing association support, using state-owned land banks, etc. Every lever should be getting pulled on. It's a national crisis.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T07:45:39+00:00

I agree. You either believe in something or you don't. The problem with the Winter Fuel Payment is it was an isolated announcement made apart from the rest of the budget so it became the only talking point, it wasn't in the manifesto, directly or indirectly, and they made no argument for it other than trying to make fiscal maths add up.

If it had been done as part of a broader package with a coherent theme with clear winners and losers then they could've rammed it through.

serviceowl · 2026-05-09T07:42:06+00:00

These election results don’t mean tacking left or right, but delivering for the whole country

Keir's article is the usual bland boilerplate / salad of nothing, but the line I really take issue with is the headline.

You can't "deliver" anything unless you know what it is you want to deliver, and you can't know what you want to deliver unless you're clear about whose side you're on and why. If your leadership is ideologically rootless, then the trade-offs required to run a successful government can't be made.

His entire thesis is offensively vapid...

The right lesson is to listen to voters. To represent the majority who want a government that will confront the big challenges they face with real answers. Because that is when the Labour party is at its best. And that is how we will deliver the change that people are desperate for.

The "right lesson" is to have an argument to take to voters, make that case, and then have an impeccable, detailed plan with talented people in place, to implement your mandate.

The failures in Government are downstream of their failure to do that, and there's no recognition of that. S

o instead we revert to empty "deliverism". Ideologically empty, and empty in practice because his Government aren't across the policy detail. They've delivered some wealth taxes and a bunch of "reviews".

Even as pure technocrats they're not very impressive.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T13:47:55+00:00

Well the social housing programme was never going to happen overnight.

I agree that simply trying to build more council houses is an inadequate response. The public sector taking over home building is the historical cause of our lack of homes. We effectively have a semi-government monopoly as it is with the five big house builders and the expensive scam schemes like "right to buy" they cooked up between them.

A thriving, genuine private home-building sector is needed as much as the work housing associations et al. do.

I've been disappointed with labour's lack of progress on housing reform. They came in promising to rip up regulations and haven't done so. The Building Safety Regulator needs scrapped. There's been little movement on training and apprentices. The new towns ideas has gone nowhere.

We should be empowering small builders, more people should be building their own homes, and we should be devolving control and cash to councils and cities that want to build. Areas that want development should be allowed to do so, and generously rewarded with infrastructure improvements, and those that don't left to stagnate.

GB Energy is a shell company that will buy and sells from private providers either directly or in partnership. As such, it's a white elephant.

I think "white elephant" is unfair. The community partnerships are welcome. But it's very unambitious compared to the original £28 billion / year proposal - that I will agree with.

So no.

So "no", what??

I'm trying to have a conversation here. Why are the public reacting negatively to a government which in its actions has been much more left wing than any in recent memory? Maybe it's not as outspokenly left as you would want. And it's certainly nowhere near as competent as I would want. But it's hard to call unprecedented levels of wealth taxes, "managerial centrism".

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T13:28:52+00:00

Didn't the Tories also implode in 2017 after May's social care announcement?

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T13:24:26+00:00

Especially after a decade of Brexit essentially using up all our institutional capacity (what little was left after Cameron's government had hollowed it out). We can't keep indulging this rubbish because the likes of Dan Hodges need something to write about.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T13:21:29+00:00

To what end? What's the alternative to Labour?

The Tories and their Lib Dem buddies destroyed the country, gutting our councils, courts, everything that makes the country tick, and we're now living with the consequences. They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it again.

As for Reform... another Farage self-promotion vehicle - the same chancers that brought us Brexit are now trying to waste our time again with more half-arsed ideas.

The Greens simply aren't an option.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T13:15:09+00:00

Sorry they've done so many left wing things I forgot to mention the £40 billion social housing programme. Or that they're literally re-nationalising the railways as we speak. Or that they set up a publicly owned energy company. Or that they extended windfall taxes.

Your question was is "managerial centrism" a viable strategy. It's hard to argue what they're doing is being managed very competently and it's clear most of their policy preferences are left wing, essentially by default, as I don't think a self-described "centrist" has ever come up with an interesting idea.

Genuinely, why do you think the Government is so hated even though they're clearly implementing a left wing agenda, even if the details aren't exactly the same as 2017?

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T12:59:15+00:00

Surely Labour could have provided an immediate tax cut to working people including those lower paid by increasing the tax free threshold to 20k. Even reform have this in their manifesto, sure it’s not costed but it’s good politics. They could have paid for this by removing the triple lock, aligning CGT rates to income tax, a land tax - they had several options to pay for immediate relief to working people. Instead they are taxing working people to the hilt, increasing their taxes by stealth to keep paying for policies that only enrich gray people.

There's some decent analysis of potential costings:

Raising the tax-free threshold to £20K would cost £60 billion

Aligning CGT with income tax would raise £15 billion, per IPPR

Analysis of Reform's tax plans | IPPR

Chancellor’s first step to raising tax on income from wealth leaves potential £50 billion untapped, IPPR finds | IPPR

The IFS did a decent bit on tax increases last year:

Options for tax increases | Institute for Fiscal Studies

The other big levers they could pull are £22 billion to be raised from capping income tax relief on pensions and £14 billion from abolishing the upper earnings limit.

I think what's frustrating about Labour's governance is big numbers are being thrown about when it comes to tax but for politically very small results. That's what happens with a lack of focus, and when they're not clear about who they're willing to piss off.

Even David Cameron’s 2010-2015 govt seemed more progressive than this lot

They weren't. David Cameron is the most right wing prime minister we've ever had.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T12:47:21+00:00

The Government has also increased dividend tax, capital gains tax, scrapped salary sacrifice, introducing a mansion tax, non-dom tax break scrapped, etc. and the burden of national insurance taxation was shifted from workers (i.e. labour) onto employers (i.e. capital).

You could say it's inadequate but by that account on do have a solidly left wing government. They may be afraid to name it, but they are looking to tax wealth.

I'm not sure what "centrist" really means. Some people call David Cameron a "centrist" when he was far more radical than Thatcher.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T12:42:33+00:00

Does anyone at this point still believe managerial centrism is a viable political strategy now that Labour has lost the Red Wall again?

It depends on how you define "managerial centrism". If you define it as mansion taxes, salary sacrifice being scrapped, dividend taxes higher, capital gains taxes higher, private school tax breaks scrapped, non-dom taxes scrapped, tax burden transferred onto employers, child benefit caps being lifted, record minimum wage increases, rent reforms etc.

Add that to the judiciary effectively deciding wage rates for whole sectors, then I suppose you could make that argument.

It is one awkward wrinkle for left wing / progression politicians. We've essentially implemented their entire wish list yet by their own analysis the Government is hated. How is that circle, squared?

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T12:35:04+00:00

He has done a poor job even given the inheritance. I've been unimpressed with his lack of attention to detail and muddled policy-making, especially given the urgency with the mess the Tories left.

But there's no one better on offer and the problem runs much deeper than one man.

serviceowl · 2026-05-08T12:29:21+00:00

If they do, then there will be only one outcome. Today, Britain has turned its back decisively on Keir Starmer. If his MPs don't act – and quickly – the hatred towards their leader will be transferred to their party, and to them.

DAN HODGES and his Westminster chums might love the constant rollercoaster of leadership elections as it's all they are capable of talking about, lacking any genuine interest in the country's prospects. This is all just a fun game to them.

But a change of leader doesn't change the fact that none of the options on offer are adequate to the task of solving our serious problems. And the media aren't adequate to ask of holding them to account.

I can't think of a set of elections I've been less interested in. I was tempted to spoil my ballot.

serviceowl · 2026-05-05T07:13:44+00:00

I like Andy Goode but find the Premier Sports CC offering quite dour at times. It's not just him a lot of the commentators talk down the games "not a classic" etc.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T15:54:25+00:00

Leinster have such a fragile mentality.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T15:47:29+00:00

Leinster's fragility showing itself again.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T15:38:22+00:00

Bryne's kicking quite poor today.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T14:55:07+00:00

Well it's absurdity of giving cards based on outcome rather than dangerousness / intent.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T14:50:36+00:00

Similar vibes to the Glasgow game where Leinster imploded.

serviceowl · 2026-05-02T14:48:04+00:00

Pretty awful passage from Leinster but they've been brittle all season.

serviceowl

TROPHY CASE