Well, hello gordon

This weekend, Gordon Brown gets the keys to 10 Downing Street following his formal endorsement as Labour leader. It’s a long way from the early 1980s, when as a rookie MP, he was turning up at Shelter protest rallies. We saw a flash of this early idealism at last month’s launch of the shortest leadership campaign in Labour history. In his speech, the first issue Brown flagged up was the affordable housing crisis. And the following week, his first concrete policy pledge was to build five new “eco towns”. But is Brown’s concern anything more than a flash in the pan? Regenerate has spoken to politicians, civil servants and campaigners who have worked closely with Brown to find out what drives his thinking on the issue.

Brown’s world view is rooted in the Fife town of Kirkcaldy, where he grew up. There, his father John, a Church of Scotland minister, offered an open house to the town’s poor, instilling a strong sense of social justice in his youngest son.

These interests flowered in the idealistic milieu of late 1960s student life at Edinburgh University. There, Brown met Sheila McKechnie, who remained a close friend until her early death from cancer in 2004. As director of Shelter, McKechnie became the fiercest critic of the Conservative government’s housing policy when the number of rough sleepers shot up during the late 1980s. Brown became a trustee of the foundation that was set up in McKechnie’s memory to support campaigning work.

Shelter director Adam Sampson believes that the McKechnie link is important in understanding the roots of Brown’s recently much trumpeted concerns about housing. “He has come from that place historically and he has always been sympathetic to the social justice issues that Shelter has campaigned for since he became chancellor,” says Sampson.

But at a local level, Brown has had limited involvement with housing issues. This partly reflects local circumstances in Fife, the area which Brown has represented since entering parliament in 1983. Here, unemployment rather than housing has been the main problem following the closure of the mines that used to be the area’s main employer – Brown has played a key role in supporting the recent establishment of an urban regeneration company in Fife. But he has had limited involvement with domestic affairs north of the border, having early on passed up an offer of a place on the shadow Scottish Office team in order to concentrate on areas with a higher national profile.

And neither was concern about housing very prominent during the early years of the Labour government. Brown’s decision to stick to Tory spending plans resulted in historically low levels of social housing expenditure.

Brown vs Blair

Former housing and planning minister Nick Raynsford says Brown had other priorities: “Housing came fairly low on the pecking order.” But behind the scenes, the Greenwich MP maintains, Brown was more interested in housing issues than Tony Blair. “I always had the greatest difficulty getting support from Blair,” says Raynsford. He found Brown, by contrast, much more receptive to his ideas. “Housing’s always been on his radar, but it’s certainly been more prominent recently,” he says. “Social justice is unquestionably part of it. He feels very strongly about the social divisions and the importance of providing options for people who don’t have wealthy relatives to help them into owner occupation.”

Raynsford gives Brown a large share of the credit for the series of inflation-busting cash increases that housing has enjoyed since 1999’s first comprehensive spending review. And the bulk of this investment was being ploughed into the decidedly non-headline grabbing and un-swing voter friendly decent homes programme.

Housing’s always been on Brown’s agenda, but it’s certainly been more prominent recently

Nick Raynsford, MP

For Centre for Cities director Dermot Finch, who was a Treasury civil servant at the time, Brown’s interest in housing is no surprise. But even back then, Brown’s real interest was not refurbishing clapped-out council housing, despite the sums of money being awarded to the decent homes programme. “Decent homes was a cost-effective way of doing social justice,” says Finch.

Brown’s heart lay rather in how to promote wider home ownership, which tied in with his wider interest in tackling worklessness. It is a theme that looks set to remain a core concern, alongside increased supply. “He felt very strongly about home ownership as a work incentive,” says Finch. “He felt that if you handed a home or a part of it to somebody, they would be far less likely to fall into welfare.”

Political positioning comes into play as well. Giving greater priority to housing will play well with the party. “Brown understands the importance of housing as an issue with which he can distinguish himself from Blair,” says a senior Labour regeneration source.

Allowing councils to build housing again will appeal to the party, which has consistently voted at its annual conference to give authorities the same housing investment borrowing powers as registered social landlords.

But Brown’s interest in housing extends beyond party management. He is aware of the potency of Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy revolution in spreading the popular capitalism message in the 1980s. He too is keen for Labour to be seen as the party of home ownership.

Housing and the economy

As chancellor of the exchequer, Brown has developed a profound understanding of how housing impacts on the stability of the wider economy. In his first Budget speech, in 1997, Brown pledged: “I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery.” He used this Budget to scrap the last vestiges of mortgage interest tax relief and introduced the first of a series of stamp duty rises.

However, house prices have since rocketed and Brown has concentrated on moves to boost housing affordability by increasing supply. He gave his blessing to the spending on the growth areas, while the chancellor’s right-hand man, Ed Balls, took a very close interest in the development of the housing market renewal programme. And of course the Barker review of housing supply was a Treasury initiative.

National Housing Federation chief executive David Orr, who recalls that Brown opened his 2005 CSR speech by speaking about the importance of housing, says: “It’s been a fairly consistent message.” Sampson says: “There’s been evidence of Brown as a believer in social justice issues and the pragmatic, economically focused Brown. What we now have is Gordon Brown focusing on housing as an issue that is potentially popular electorally. No other major political figure has put housing as high on the agenda in recent times.” But, he warns, “the touchstone of whether the government is serious about housing is how much money it is prepared to put in”.