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September 13, 2024 - 2:30pm
There have been actual honeymoons that have lasted longer than Keir Starmer’s metaphorical honeymoon with the British electorate. Two months in, only one in five respondents to a recent poll said they approved of the new government, while Starmer’s popularity is at a record low.
Pollsters and analysts have offered explanations for why this might be. But Labour had better get used to being unpopular, because the party is going to face many of the same economic and social conundrums that the Tories did. London Mayor Sadiq Khan brought attention to a few of these Gordian knots this week when he floated the idea that ex-convicts — this week’s early prison releases created an extra 1,700 of them — might be able to jump the queue for social housing as a way to reduce re-offending.
This is not a completely terrible idea. It has a certain logic, and is potentially a way of minimising costly and dangerous recidivism. But it betrays a disastrous misunderstanding of the current political conditions. If housing were plentiful and affordable for the law-abiding general population, then it might not cause much controversy. But housing is not plentiful and cheap, and Labour does not have a better plan than the Tories did about how to fix this.
As well as constant pressure on the demand side from immigration, the supply of housing is severely limited by planning restrictions, green belts, and the great power that our system gives to objectors — the much-disliked (but not always unreasonable) Nimbys. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced major planning reforms in order to build 1.5 million homes in this parliamentary term. Labour will reform the green belt and approve building on “grey belt” land, as well as planning new towns akin to those built after the Second World War. Even if this government does achieve its target, the country will still lack sufficient housing — the Financial Times reports that around half a million new homes must be built every year to keep up with demand.
Over this parliament, Labour will find that many of the country’s problems are of this kind — intractable without fundamental structural reforms. And the party is likely to find this out sooner rather than later, because sustained large spending increases of the kind that Tony Blair was able to unleash in his second term are simply not possible in the current climate. Starmer and Reeves can’t help but frequently admonish the Conservative Party for the disastrous inheritance it left. Yet the Treasury this week refused a freedom of information request about the specifics of the much-touted £22 billion fiscal “black hole”.
On issues such as the NHS, law and order, prison capacity, and infrastructure, we should look out for a dawning realisation that there are deep flaws in the way we organise the provision of state services. The Tories may or may not have achieved this realisation — but if they did, it doesn’t seem to have filtered through to policy. Their theoretical and rhetorical commitment to supply-side reform, removing unnecessary regulation, and individual liberty was entirely unmatched by any kind of practical action. In the same way that only Richard Nixon could go to China, perhaps only Labour can come to terms with the need for clearing administrative blockages from British public life. But, as the Zen masters say, we’ll see.
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SubscribeSo, become a convict, get sent to Scrubs, convert to islam during your stay, get released after serving a third of your sentence, and then get allocated social housing. In London.
Where do I sign?
It’s the very last bit which would turn me off. Now somewhere rural in the shires and where do I sign up.
It’s like the Rwanda scheme. The cancellation of which has totally buggered up my retirement plan in which, on retirement I was planning to get the tunnel to Calais, hire a rib and decent outboard, chuck away my passport “metaphorically as would be useful later), pop back to blighty and get a free glight to free accommodation and support in a warm, stable country.
Not London. It’s Londonistan (thanks Melanie Philips)
Where were these prisoners housed until recently?
Treasury this week refused a freedom of information request about the specifics of the much-touted £22 billion fiscal “black hole”.
Surely not more disinformation from 2 tier Kier Stalin! Whatever is he going to tell us next? Far right thugs eating dogs in some northern s#it hole created by Phoney Blair’s deindustrialisation?
I also understand the govt refuses to break down crime stats according to citizenship status or race.
Khan’s plan is part of a general aim – to bring the country to its knees.
The Treasurys refusal is tantamount to an admission that the whole £22 billion black hole is either pure fiction or based on highly suspect and partisan numbers (spending which the previous government did not intend to implement but which the current government has on the basis that their predecessors eventually would have had to do.)
It’s like buying a house and then complaining that you’re now on the hook for the outlay for a full internal refurbishment and a conservatory on the basis that the estate agent said they would probably have needed to do so somewhere down the line as their neighbours wanted them to do in order to increase the value of their properties.
??
It is starting to dawn on many voters that their elected politicians are increasingly an irrelevance because the actual business of government is largely in the hands of unelected civil service bureaucrats anyway. And for them It’s all ticking pc boxes of one thing or another; the efficiency drive resulting in more staff employed to deliver a poorer service? It would seem that we are just stuck with the modern equivalent of Dickens’ Circumlocution Office. Stuck with a dreary nannying state bureaucracy that is just perfect for just the kind of gaming of the system alluded to here by other commenters. Priority-housing-for-criminals is reminiscent of the story of the prodigal son (otherwise known as the criminal son).
Not so much “why is he prioritising blah blah blah?” As: Why is Sadiq Khan?
It is a completely terrible idea. These chancers want to move refugees up the list also ( or at least i saw an unherd article on the topic recently) . These clowns really do want tondestroy the morale of working people. They want to play politics with housing allocation. As someone once said , workers unite
Coming from the man who has presided over record low housebuilding in London!!!!!
See what happens if voting rights are taken from prisoners until the end of their jail sentence….I bet that suddenly twerps like Khan will loose interest.
Does not this latest wheeze of Sadiq Khan’s serve only to confirm that many of those who rule over us are mad, bad and dangerous to know?
“It has a certain logic”
Hmmm.