Within the context of the prevailing political debate why does the serious media so often fail to look at underlying causes of house excessive house prices and rents? After all extortionate accommodation costs are destroying the financial prospects for the post boomer generation. In the run-up to the general election this omission reflects poorly. Perhaps there is a simple, unacknowledged reason. Explaining why the housing supply market has broken is complicated: too complicated for even the most respected journalists to understand? Instead a myriad of fragmented media pieces examining isolated failings is no way to explain to lay readers why the housing market is broken, and making plain their prospect of owning their own home without fundamental housing policy change is an illusion.
An example is the piece in the FT (17 August 2023; Inside Politics) by Stephen Bush, Columnist and Associate Editor writing about contemporary domestic politics in the run up to the general election. His first thought, which is sensible needs focus. He notes “ headline inflation has fallen to 6.8%. The bad news: the headline fall masks that the underlying pressures driving up.inflation have yet to ease in the U.K.”. He adds that without actual deflation in the cost of goods, services etc the government is going to continue to face a lot of voter anger over inflation.Bush’s second thought is the inflation target.. What happens if it is missed? True too. But housing….., well it is not there. Rising rents, rising house prices and journalistic silence. Which seems an omission in a piece examining the domestic politics of the next election.
My thought looking towards the next election is this. How does Sunak keep his backbench Tory MP’s pulling together? The Tory growth realists and nimby nothing new anywhere far right activists maybe in the same political party but, let’s be honest do not have the same objectives. Michael Gove, housing minister wants to quadruple the size of Cambridge in twenty years to compete internationally. He faces a crusade of rural voters who are passionate that growth can happen, and without change near them. Their objections to new homes, new pylons, or new wind turbines near them are in the interest of preserving England’s quintessential rural countryside. As each initiative is unforeseen, unexpected and believed to be unnecessary they have a legitimate view. Gove says he will appeal to Tory backbenchers who know the truth. No growth without change in reality means economic stagnation. But is this Gove appeal credible? Bags of suppressed employment growth in the South was blocked in the eighties, the nineties, the naughtiies and during the last thirteen years of Conservative government. The price paid already is massive. Snag is that Gove can appeal to his MP’s but who do they appeal too if no one tells local rural residents the spatial truth? If you reject change, you condemn your country’s and your children’s future to the priorities of grumpy old men. The sad truth no one has told them the facts of life!
In the meantime the alienated post war boomers generation anger will grow as their accommodation costs accelerate up.
Ian Campbell
20 August 2023
