thinking about how all Tory housing policy but esp since 2010 is based on wanting something literally impossible

there are two times that mass house-building has happened in the last hundred years. One is suburban semi development in the 30s, which absolutely carpeted the home counties, hence creating a conservation lobby (and also involved lots of local authority housing)

there's absolutely no way that can happen now because the Tory base in outer suburbs and villages hate it nearly as much as they hate foreigners and human decency - though all the 'building beautiful' stuff is meant to encourage that conservation lobby to roll over

the other time mass house-building happened, of course, was roughly 1946-1974, when it was led overwhelmingly by local authorities, under the Hated 1947 Town and Country Planning act that allegedly stops mass house-building. We all know why this is not an option, obviously.

so given they can't do:
- hardline neoliberalism where you build on all the green belt
- return to social democracy
we get these ludicrous fixes that do nothing except make lots of money for developers, which of course is a nice added bonus but not what the policy purports to do

but they know that they're creating an entire generation of ppl who will never vote Tory because they will never own a home, so they'd like to come up with a Weird Trick that means they can expand home ownership without doing either of those two things. They can't, it's nonsense

so what we'll see is more of the same - empty luxury high-rises in Manchester and Vauxhall, office blocks turned into rabbit-hutches in and around London, and think-tank twats being hired by Cummings to 'think the unthinkable' ie pretend the impossible is not impossible