Starmers says that his government will deliver “1.5 million homes in five years”, thanks to Labour’s new home-accelerating taskforce (whatever that is).
This equates to 300,000 a year – an extremely ambitious task. How then do the powers that be propose to meet these targets?
Deregulation
Labour has laid most of the blame for Britain’s housing crisis at the feet of NIMBYish local councils, who they say are sluggish in approving plans for new developments.
Labour will back the builders, not the blockers.
We’ll reform our planning system to build houses, build national infrastructure projects and grow our economy. pic.twitter.com/eTPS30ek0l
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 18, 2023
True, approvals for construction are at their lowest rate since the 1970s. This is a serious bottleneck. But where does this come from?
Might it have something to do with the fact that councils everywhere are on the verge of bankruptcy; crumbling under the weight of collapsing communities and social services, thanks to decades of austerity?
In reality, the government and its taskforce have few means for accelerating approvals, short of whipping public servants to work faster and cutting corners everywhere they can. We assume they plan to do both.
This is the real meaning behind Starmer and Reeves’ vague promise to slash the ‘red tape’ surrounding planning permissions.
Tragic disasters like Grenfell show what this deregulation could mean in practice – allowing private property developers to get away with murder.
Construction workforce
The last few years have seen a substantial slowdown in building, reaching a nadir lately.
In the first quarter of 2024, the number of new homes built in the UK fell by a staggering 20 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.
As a result, massive layoffs are on the order of the day.
To reach a target of 300,000 newbuilds per year, however, the construction industry needs to be recruiting far more workers.
Since the pandemic, there are now half-a-million fewer construction workers. This represents an enormous contraction in the sector’s workforce.
Yet Labour proposes no solutions to this supply-side issue, other than to “open up the doors to opportunity”, alongside other similarly nebulous measures.
Labour’s housing programme, therefore, is a mixture of barefaced lies and complete fantasy.
Market failure
The real logjam in construction, in this respect, is not regulations and planning permissions, but private property and the market.
The top five major construction monopolies – like Morgan Sindall Group and Kier Group – have had permission for over 150,000 new development sites up-and-down the country for months, and in some cases even years. Yet not one brick has been laid.
“We are not flooding the market,” insists construction fat-cat Jennie Daly. “We are not delivering more homes than the market can absorb. It’s a very careful balance.”
A very ‘careful balance’ between lining their own pockets and providing the housing that society needs, that is.
Reading between the lines, it’s clear that private developers will refuse to build homes, in order to wait for demand and prices – and thus their profits – to go up.
Let’s not forget, Kier, Sindall, and co. are not in the business of making houses – they are in the business of making money. They don’t care whether homes are built or not, as long as they and their shareholders get juicy returns.
But if they don’t increase the supply of new properties, as demand for accommodation rises, then prices won’t come down. In effect, because of the enormous, concentrated power of these monopolies, they are able to fix prices at extortionate, unaffordable levels.
Construction bosses are correct, therefore, to say that the market can’t “absorb” new houses. But to that, we say: to hell with the market! To hell with the capitalists, bankers, landlords, and their system!
Parasitic landlords
Even if by some dark magic the Labour government conjured up 1.5 million new houses, whose hands would these properties end up in?
With working families crushed by decades of austerity and wage suppression, and borrowing costs at elevated levels, most are simply unable to afford to buy their own home.
This forces many into the rental market, to the benefit of profiteering landlords.
It is the big landlords, management firms, and speculating investors who are propping up demand, given that owning a home is out of reach for the majority of ordinary workers.
80 percent of landlords are currently described as ‘portfolio landlords’, owning more than four properties.
After the 2008 crash, these parasites swallowed up a huge number of houses, sold off during the recession. And since then, they have been accumulating vast sums of wealth through evermore extortionate rents.
In turn, with this hoarded fortune, they are able to buy up bigger and bigger chunks of the property market.
On the one hand, then, you have monopoly landlords controlling the existing housing stock. On the other, you have monopoly developers essentially fixing prices for newbuilds.
And all the while, Labour wants to work with the private sector to fix the crisis. But the private sector is the crisis!
Socialist programme
The last time Britain had a housing boom comparable to what Labour now promises was in the postwar period, from around 1945-1970.
At this time, up to a million homes a year were being built, mostly thanks to mass council-led construction programmes.
Living in a comfortable home became an achievable expectation for working families, thanks to the hard-fought economic and political gains of the working class.
The ruling class was faced with the spectre of revolution after the war. Alongside the establishment of the NHS and cradle-to-grave welfare, council housing was a major conquest for the working class.
The postwar boom was the most prosperous period in capitalism’s history, however. Unlike then, capitalism today – in Britain and globally – is in a deep crisis.
The system can no longer provide reforms. In fact, the ruling class is now intent on stripping away all the gains of the past. Austerity and attacks are on the agenda.
The capitalists and their representatives cannot be trusted to provide society with necessities such as housing. Instead, we need a determined class struggle to wrest the commanding heights of the economy away from the bosses, and into workers’ hands.
Only through nationalisation, workers’ control, and socialist planning can we build the homes that working people need and deserve. This is the bold programme that we must fight for.
