The surprising comeback of the council house |
It’s always struck me as weird that Labour and the Left were so opposed to the sale of council houses. The idea was popular with the public, especially council tenants, and there were plenty of people in Labour who argued the party should go for it; Frank Field famously said government should “free the council serfs”. But as you know, Labour ducked the idea, handed the policy to the Tories on a plate, and Margaret Thatcher went for it and got all the credit, deservedly so.
The reason I say it’s weird that Labour never went for the policy is it’s an obvious way to improve the lives of millions of working people: Labour’s people, or at least they used to be. It also dealt with some of the inequality in housing: owner-occupiers could do what they wanted whereas council tenants were subject to a hundred petty rules about what colour their doors could be and so on. And council housing was a drag on the basic freedom of movement: lots of people were afraid of moving for work if it meant giving up their house and going to the back of the queue somewhere else.
Lots of politicians on the Left refused to accept this reality – and still do – but the awkward bit for them was that council tenants weren’t so ideologically committed to the public sector, saw the potential to improve their lives, and bought their houses in big numbers; the sale of council houses was a hugely popular policy. Not that it mattered to the Scottish Government I’m afraid: in 2016, Sturgeon’s government ended right-to-buy and said they were doing so because it had led to a considerable reduction in the availability of affordable social rented homes.
On the face of it, that’s true, how could it not be: the policy was explicitly to sell off social housing and since 1980, nearly half a million council and........