Here we go again.
Source: The Times - Millionaire banker backs Dominic Raab’s leadership bid
Another Telegraph article from Dominic Raab and another blatant tilt at the Tory leadership, all dressed up as serious policy making. No mention of the Tory government’s shameful nine-year record that has exacerbated the housing crisis in the UK.
“Successive governments haven’t been radical enough”,
he says, as if he’d been on the Opposition benches all this time. No self-awareness that an “aspirational Conservative vision for the future” for the many, coming from a man backed by money from a private bank, should no more be trusted than the “snake oil socialism” he attributes to Jeremy Corbyn.
Nor any mention of the particular crisis of inequality that he presides over in Esher and Walton. Just lots of his usual magical thinking, airbrushing out his complicity in the national crisis with some “radical” ideas like apps (surely he’s not thin-skinned enough to be rattled by the credentials of his leadership rival, and self-styled tech-whizz, Matt Hancock this week?) and flat-pack housing.
So, firstly, the Tory record on housing:
House building still hasn’t recovered to the same level as before the 2007-2008 recession and was at its lowest level since the 1920s in the early years of this decade. Source: FullFact.org
Since 2012, the Right to Buy scheme has led to what the Local Government Association has called a “firesale” of more than 60,000 discounted council properties, with many of those homes rapidly passing to private landlords. Source: Independent.co.uk
When Raab was Housing Minister, his Department was forced to admit that its target to replace these Right to Buy homes was being missed. Source: Gov.uk . As per his usual reaction when in a position of responsibility, Raab blamed someone else: local councils. Source: Local Government Chronicle
Working hard – or “grafting” as Raab likes to call it (Dominic Raab: “Hard graft can make Britain great again” (Source: Daily Telegraph, 04/09/2012) – won’t help the “young working Britons” Raab cites in today’s article. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported last December that more than half a million more workers are living in poverty now than five years ago, and in-work poverty has been rising even faster than employment (Source: The Joseph Rowntree Foundation: UK Poverty 2018, December 2018)
And for the poorest in our divided nation, the combination of a lack of social housing, cuts in benefits and a stark rise in inequalities under the Tories, means that Raab’s “aspirational vision” is nothing more than a pipe dream. ONS figures in February showed that incomes for the poorest fifth of the population had contracted by 1.6% in the year ending 2019, while the average income for the richest fifth had risen by 4.7%. Source: The Guardian
And then let’s not forget that Dominic Raab has been MP for nine years in a constituency where the housing crisis and income inequality is at its most acute:
According to National Housing Federation data, Elmbridge is the most difficult place in England, outside of London, to get a foot on the property ladder (Source: New Economics Foundation: Inequality in Elmbridge)
9,480 new homes are required to meet housing demand in Elmbridge between 2015 and 2035; this equates to 474 per annum (Source: Elmbridge: Knowing our Communities)
Why this home-owning and house-building epiphany for our local MP? And why now? Well, the “Generation Why?” report from the Onward think tank was published earlier this week, to much fanfare from Tory leadership contenders. It sets out clearly that:
“The decline in homeownership among younger generations undoubtedly harms the Conservatives, whose vote is correlated with tenure.”
Source: UK Onward
Despite presiding over huge inequalities and a home ownership crisis on his own doorstep, despite service as Housing Minister, Dominic Raab now realises that the crisis of home ownership in this country is an existential threat to his party’s very survival. He is nothing if not an opportunist. He wants Tory members’ votes to cement his leadership ambitions. Thankfully, I know from knocking on doors on his own doorstep that the voters that really matter – his constituents – have seen through him.
Enough is enough.