The Guardian view on Boris Johnson and housing: old and failed answers

theguardian.com:

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