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Of all the policies I worked on in government, housing was the most depressing. (1/14)
Initially I was thrilled to be working w Oliver Letwin & James O'Shaughnessy who got it: it was all about supply & rising prices bad (2/14)
We had lots of long indulgent chats about how together we'd change everything. And started on a housing strategy. (3/14)
But at every turn, supply proposals got ditched. Pickles and his worst influence, Sheridan Westlake, wanted to defend Tory shires. (4/14)
Shapps who'd said in opposition he wanted prices to stop rising insisted any such language was taken out - and HMT insisted harder (5/14)
Cameron's response to a brilliant set of supply ideas by a No10 official was "we won't need these once immigration's 10s of 1000s". (6/14)
Lib Dems at fault too. "Let councils borrow to build homes" was the only idea they'd ever get excited about... (7/14)
And nimbyish tendencies prevailed locally. Wanted council homes so they could say doing something affordable... (8/14)
instead of building enough to make all homes affordable. (9/14)
Then housing started to be bigger political issue: and from doing nothing the coalition started doing active damage. (10/14)
Cameron threw the sink at Right to Buy and Osborne dreamt up the madness of Help to Buy. (11/14)
"Let councils borrow to build homes" bleated the Lib Dems. (12/14)
I don't know how we fix this. The political bravery to take on home owners and tell them their ill gotten asset needs to depreciate (13/14)
Who has that? Rent control illusory fix that hurts supply. Sadiq wimped out on green belt. Can anyone give me hope? (14/14)
