We need to face up to the hard truth that every planning rejection in a high-demand area is not just a lost home—it is a lost voter, a lost future, and a fraying thread in the Conservative social contract. This is not about abandoning our principles. It is about applying them.
Unlike Labour-controlled local authorities, Conservatives set out their proposals and action them. As the Party of aspiration, actively promoting low cost home ownership would be a great achievement.
Runaway house prices had already short-circuited the policy as a driver of home-ownership in the parts of the country where it was needed most, and Tory ministers ignored obvious reforms.
Young voters are looking for material solutions that will directly benefit their lives and futures. For too long, they have not found them in the Conservative offer.
Taxation, education, business, and housing – the Centre for Policy Studies has plenty of practical recommendations for those drawing up the Conservative manifest.
In all likelihood, nobody will ever be able to prove she didn’t pay taxes she owed – but nor will it ever be certain she didn’t.
Being more popular than an incumbent government that has been in office for 14 years is an essential first step for any leader of the opposition. But it is not in itself a test of the skills needed to govern.
If she really has the legal advice she claims, this damaging story should be easy to close down. If he can’t even make his own deputy show it to him, what does that say about his authority?
Under the Adam Smith Institute’s proposed scheme, anyone who is currently eligible for the existing Right to Buy scheme would be allowed to use the discount to purchase any private house of their choosing.
If the party really wants to honour its past, then it must face up to problems of the present.
It’s not bad policy, but it isn’t obvious why one group is deserving of so much more support than the other.
The key is not just to get homes built, but to provide realistic pathways to ownership for middle- and working-class families.
Older couples delay downsizing because they cannot justify the cost, while younger families cannot move up. Fewer homes come to market, so prices remain high and supply tight. Britain’s housing market has become a game of musical chairs with the music turned off.