Starmer and Gove take on NIMBY’s
Keir Starmer waged a war on NIMBY’s today as he vowed to make Labour the party of housebuilding and break the taboo of building on the green belt.
Speaking at the British Chamber of Commerce global annual conference, the Labour leader insisted he would back “the builders, not the blockers” by giving councils and residents more power to build in undeveloped areas to meet local housing need.
Starmer’s pledge comes amid estimates that a child born this year has a less than one in three chance of owning a home by the time they’re 50.
“A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who – more often than not – enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” said the leader of the opposition.
He blamed the Conservative party for killing the dream of home owning for an entire generation and vowed to bring back compulsory housebuilding targets, which the PM was forced to drop in December to see off a backbench rebellion.
The pledge contradicts some former Labour positions. Even the shadow housing secretary, Lisa Nandy, blocked over a thousand homes from being belt in her own constituency over greenbelt concerns back in 2016.
Yet Starmer’s revised position is a clever way to exploit tensions within the Tory party, which remains bitterly divided over planning reform.
Following the local elections, Tory MP Kelly Tolhurst blamed party losses in Medway on “unrealistic housing targets” forcing councils to “build really significant numbers of homes” while Tory MP Charles Walker argued the exact opposite, insisting it was the scrapping of housebuilding targets and failure to “build homes for young people” that was costing them seats.
That said, despite these Tory divisions, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove appears keen to match Starmer’s pro-house building credentials.
Gove gave an interview to the Sun today in which he pledged to youngsters: “I will never screw you over to appease NIMBY MPs”. His 18 year-old son would hold him to this, he added.
What’s more, while Starmer is busy trying to win over aspiring home owners, Gove is also trying to appease England’s 11 million renters today by promising an overhaul of the private rental sector.
The Levelling Up Secretary has unveiled his Renters Reform Bill, which would ban landlords from evicting tenants with no justification. Homeless charity Shelter has welcomed the legislation, noting that almost 230,000 private renters have been served with no-fault evictions since 2019.
The bill would also stop landlords from hiking rents more than once a year. And, while it would make it easier for landlords to evict antisocial tenants, it would ban them from rejecting tenants simply for being on benefits or having children.
With Starmer and Gove fighting to win over voters with their respective housing reforms, where does this leave the Lib Dems?
Public anger at plans under Johnson’s government to build on the green belt actually became a useful way for the Lib Dems to win over former Tory voters. This was instrumental, for instance, in enabling them to pull off an extraordinary by-election victory in June 2021 in Chesham and Amersham – a former Tory safe seat.
Yet Lib Dem leader Ed Davey will need to come up with a credible plan to increase housebuilding too. If he simply puts the demands of NIMBY’s over young people’s home-owning dreams, his party risks looking the most out of touch of the three.
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