Don’t trust Labour to build houses

Could a promise of more housebuilding win an election, or does the Nimby vote still rule the shires? Labour, it seems, has decided the former. The Times reports this morning that it has settled on a strategy of unashamedly promising more house-building, including on the green belt, after research by an outside organisation revealed that people on the party’s list of most winnable seats are strongly in favour of greater housebuilding. It is a long way from the Labour party of Tony Blair and John Prescott, which seemed to vie with William Hague’s Conservatives as to who could build the fewest homes.

However, when you look at the list of Labour’s most winnable seats, they don’t exactly seem the sort of places where the Nimby vote was ever exactly strong: they include Walsall and Bloxwich, Bournemouth West, Peterborough, Birmingham Northfield, Northampton North and West Bromwich.