Not sure if a piece by Melissa York yesterday (3 June 2025) in The Times is good news or a passing flash. It seems encouraging. Talking about the new Conservative Yimby’s (yes in my back yard) activists she reports one of the promoters of a new approach to house building by the Conservatives is Airey Neave. He was a special adviser to Boris Johnson on housing and planning. Significantly it says ‘He was candid about the number of Conservative MP’s who agree with planning reform behind closed doors but felt it was too much of a ‘ political risk’ to vote for it’. This is good news, if correct.
Ms York ends by saying the next Conservative Yimby agenda is a handbook designed to help councillors and MP’s make the case for more house building on the doorstep. ‘We’re building a movement’ says James Yucel, director of Conservative Yimby. He also says ‘Everyone knows the system is broken, but too few have been prepared to take on the political risk to fix it. What’s changed is that the cost of inaction has become impossible to ignore.’ I agree with him. This is the first shaft of light, of insight from a declared Conservative activist I have encountered. It is very welcome. Full credit to both of them for a rare vein of honesty.
Can they convince the hidden and fearful Conservative MP’s that it is time for their party to face facts, and work with the Labour government for a long term, locally supported housing programme that delivers both the nations needs and has local support? What a transformation of England’s economic prospects such a dialogue would produce.
Ian Campbell
4 June 2925
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