Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, shall we? Better news later. The housing crisis is not for fixing. Not by “fixing” planning, at any rate. Not while private output is tied to economic growth, which it is. Not while public output is tied to private output, which it is. Labour’s five-year 1.5 million homebuilding target cannot be met. The party would be wise to reframe the political narrative to “providing land” for that many homes. Then at least non-providing builders can be blamed.

You can only “bulldoze” planning in an autocracy. Keir Starmer’s ill-advised remark suggests, once again, that volume housebuilders have infiltrated Labour. Two decades ago, planning reform turned out to be a putty key for the building of 300,000 homes a year. The Conservatives tore away red tape a decade later, and still the needle didn’t move. This is for the simple reason that builders only build houses when there is a prospect of profit.

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