Thread by @LinseyMcgoey

Brilliant series of talks last night.

Useful stat mentioned: approx 35% percent of UK households are rented; 30% mortgaged-homeowners; 30% own homes outright.

Here's my analysis on this stat - a thread:

https://twitter.com/jemgilbert/status/1673287163339833345

In Britain, while the proportionate of house ownership *did* fall in 2010s – an effect of the gruelling financial crisis – the key stat of over 2/3 of British households being owned or partly owned is still *the* stat for Left to grapple with.

To put in comparison, in 1918, less than a quarter of British homes were owner-occupied.

This shift – from less than a ¼ to over 2/3s of households on track today to own homes –
completely challenges stale, outdated notions of class relationships forged under the influence of Marx and Engels’ writing.

Recent discourse has focused on the fall in the 2010s of home ownership, especially among young. This devastating fall + the precarity faced by youth are deeply, deeply important…

…But too often, recent Left attention to the slight fall in 2010s overshadows Left attention to the massive rise in homeownership in decades prior.

It was the three-quarters of population in the 1918s *without* homes that helped make Labour attractive. It was the house-less who helped put Labour in charge in the 1940s.

But importantly, those three-quarters of house-less Labour backers are not coming back – not at a time when legacy housing and inheritance will mean the stat of broadly 2/3 of households being owner-occupied homes is likely to broadly persist, even if most inherit extremely late.

We wonder why the Left is flailing. It’s because of a refusal to update class understanding in line with the realities of much, much broader home-ownership.

The mid-century Labour Party did their job – compressing inequality + helping to make home ownership possible. This was a pyrrhic victory in ways – but only if class definitions stay outdated. Labour is + should be a party for home-owners – as many workers *do* own homes.

We desperately need to protect renters. But a realistic, pragmatic Left – one that is not in utter, wilful denial of massive demographic shifts – desperately needs to protect homeowners too.

Embracing social homeownership (far, far beyond specious 'rent-to-buy' schemes, but in innovative other ways) – is key to shift people Left.

I asked last night: what does 2/3 home-owners in this nation mean for Marxist understanding of class composition. The question was left unanswered. It can’t stay unanswered. End.

coda: there have been some helpful hints this way by the Novara crowd, but not enough full-fledged embrace - yet....

@jacobin or @tribunemagazine should commission me and pay me to write about this - they got a lot of mileage out of my last (free) piece - here in German😊

jacobin.de/artikel/effect…