The country needs a stable policy environment to provide a transport system that enables growth. So says Richard Holden MP, Conservative shadow Secretary of State for transport ( Discussion Brief, Transport : Growth and Delivery , 14 March 2026). I doubt the outgoing PM, Keir Starmer or his next successor, especially if it is Andy Burnham, until today mayor of Manchester for nine years., would disagree with Mr Holden. Nor do I suspect the existing government Ministers, Steve Reid, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government or his very active and well-informed number two Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State for Housing and Planning in the same department would disagree.
So far as housing goes, Mr Holden’s shadow housing Secretary of State is Sir James Cleverly and he has has just received the Conservative Policy Forum Summary of Responses Received relating to a Conservative report Britain’s Housing Challenge. It too says many respondents called for policies that will take full account of the Bank of Time. For example :
’….restore(ing) affordability and access to ownership…..support(ing) a more diverse housing market….that will protect(ing) local character and environment value……embedding infrastructure-first planning…..linking housing to long-term economic strategy…’ With other respondents saying like local concerns must be identified and resolved early/a more effective land allocation system/ the focus is on using brownfield first to maintain local character/land is only released where infrastructure and design quality can be guaranteed/ public land is parcelled/ that local councils receive fiscal benefits from central targets and above all there is a policy proposal in place to
’Create binding infrastructure delivery plans for major schemes, setting out what will be delivered, by whom and by when’.
None of these responses are necessarily going to become Conservative Party housing policy.But taken collectively they are clear evidence of the way Tory activists are thinking. Andy Burnham knows a bit about ‘’Increasing brownfield use and improving urban generation’ after his years as Manchester’s mayor.
As an advocate of long term policy making for housing and infrastructure provision which is built on policies of a cross-party and cross-border type , and despite my anger treatment of Sir Keir Starmer, if Andy Burnham does become the next PM there are, as this evidence shows, grounds for hoping that the two main parties may soon see that in this area, so crucial to the nation’s future economic growth and the future prosperity of today’s young people there is a lot of common-ground.
So it will be interesting to see if this rare opportunity is constructively used for the country’s benefit or is frittered away by Westminster’s MP’s in more years of infantile yayboo playground politics. The grown ups amongst them will have to be alert. The so called media friends will be looking for divisions and opportunities to create discord, to sell their papers, to win audience share, and to tally-up ticks. Stopping this sort of conduct, will be very difficult. But it may be obligatory to stop them creating more unaccountable PM elections which ignore reality and the people’s preferences for stable, mature governance.
Ian Campbell
22 June 2026
