Conservative optimists, whose numbers are thinner on the ground now, tried on Thursday to frame Boris Johnson’s housing speech in Blackpool as a reset of his leadership. There were several fatal flaws in this claim. These include the speech itself, Mr Johnson’s leadership, the Conservative party’s internal confusions and the economic situation facing Britain.
Predictably, the speech was oversold. It was billed as a major policy statement. It was said to be an opportunity for Mr Johnson to unleash his inner Conservative. And it was sold as part of his determination to unite the Tory party. In fact it was none of those things. There was a good case for arguing that the most eye-catching development in the housing world on Thursday was John Lewis’s confirmation that it will build 10,000 new flats on former Waitrose sites.
Mr Johnson promised to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants and announced that it would be easier for benefit claimants to build up a deposit for a mortgage. Neither announcement was quite what it seemed. There will in fact be a cap, unmentioned by Mr Johnson, on the number of homes involved, while few claimants have a realistic prospect of saving a deposit in today’s housing market and amid today’s inflation.
As a strategic response to Britain’s housing problems, the speech was irrelevant. What Britain needs is more affordable housing, not a reshuffle of existing stock to new owners, least of all when it allows private landlords in on the act. In 2019, Mr Johnson’s manifesto promised Britain would build 300,000 new houses a year by the middle of this decade. Now he has effectively conceded that this pledge has been abandoned.
The reality is that Mr Johnson was simply doing what he has done so often, repurposing limited announcements and pretending that they amount to something much more significant than they do. This was the familiar warm words campaigning approach, not an attempt to grip a complex and difficult policy area in a convincing and strategic manner. It will be largely forgotten by the end of the month. The speech nevertheless illuminated a larger problem for the Conservative party as a whole. It does not really know what it stands for under Mr Johnson and it only half understands the protectionist turn in global political economy. It therefore seeks refuge in Thatcher-era shibboleths, not in forward-facing solutions.
Since Monday’s vote of confidence, rightwing Tories have urged Mr Johnson to make tax cuts and drive more deregulation. Mr Johnson is sympathetic to this agenda, as he said in Blackpool, but he knows that the economic and political situation created by the pandemic, the Ukraine war and the energy crisis restricts his options. So he invoked the right to buy, another iconic policy for the Tory right. But he did this for tactical party political reasons, not because it is the answer to Britain’s housing problems.
Significantly, parts of the speech and many of the questions afterwards focused on wider economic issues. Britain’s economy is being rocked by increasing inflation and will soon be generating lower growth. Wages, especially for public sector workers, are being left behind by prices, as the rail dispute highlights. The average £100 petrol tank fill-up, reached this week, underlines a crisis that is at once economic, environmental and political. These are the real threats to Mr Johnson’s much-weakened position. The prime minister told the cabinet this week that they must raise their game or face the sack. He should look in the mirror.