In fairness, Sir Keir grasps that there is a problem with the UK’s hopelessly inadequate rates of house building, and he might even mean it when he talks about relaxing planning restrictions.
The catch is that everything else his party is committed to will keep on driving prices up. First, a Labour government has failed to convince that it will bring down net migration levels. These reached 745,000 in 2022, and places significant pressure on the housing market.
It is hard to see how “safe and legal” routes for asylum seekers can do anything other than make the UK a more attractive destination for anyone fleeing persecution, or, as is too often the case, simply looking for better opportunities in a richer country. Concerns have also been raised about a returns deal with the EU which would involve the acceptance of migrant quotas from the EU in return.
It has kept quiet on student visas, perhaps because academia forms part of its core vote, whilst universities are now too dependent on the foreign applicant gravy train.
There can be little doubt, too, that it will support importing more foreign workers as it throws yet more cash at the health service, and if employers say they need more people then its ministers will instinctively give in. After all, this was the party that started ramping up immigration levels in the early 2000s.
Add it all up, and there is little chance of Labour cutting the number of annual net arrivals, and it would hardly be a great surprise if the figure went above 1 million. In 2022, only 178,000 new houses were completed. Starmer has promised to build 300,000 – still far short of what is necessary.
Next, it might tweak the planning rules, and even ease the restrictions on the green belt, given that very few of its voters live in the leafy suburbs that will be most impacted. But its ideological commitment to net zero targets could mean that it makes little practical difference.
You can’t build new estates when there is no electricity, or when there are not enough reservoirs. Developers will be tied up in red tape – consider, for instance, how Labour failed to support the Government in its plans to scrap nutrient neutrality rules. Yet the Home Builders Federation has estimated this environmental red tape has stopped at least 150,000 homes from being built.
