The £200m package to buy unsold homes proposed in the draft Queen’s Speech is the government taking money from housing associations (16 May, page 10).

The £200m might on a good day prop up one of the medium-sized development sites in Deptford, south-east London. The difference between the imminent crash and the early nineties is that very few of the present-day new-build private flats are up to Housing Corporation standards.

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