Home truths: the only thing Labour is building is a bigger, more dysfunctional housing market

11th February 2025

George Monbiot writing in the Guardian on 26 January 2025 has set out the reasons why the country is still struggling to provide enough houses.

Summed up in one sentence - Private developers offer politicians a simple solution for bulldozing through this crisis - build more. But it won't work.

uild baby, build. That's about the intellectual limit of the government's housing strategy. Millions are under-housed, so let's "bulldoze" the planning system and build more homes. But it’s not nearly so simple.

As soon as anyone challenges the policy, the government brands them a nimby - another of the crude truncations that pass for debate on this issue: nimbys versus yimbys. So before I go further, let me state that I want to see lots of new social and genuinely affordable housing built as part of a massive programme to solve the worst housing crisis of any wealthy country. I’ve been making similar calls for years, not least in the report I co-authored for the Labour party in 2019: Land for the Many. I oppose Labour’s current approach for a different reason. It will fail.

Read the full hard hitting article with links to more information HERE