Here’s who should be Mrs May’s cabinet supremo to tackle the housing shortage

Who should be housing supremo in what we all assume will be Mrs May’s new administration? Brandon Lewis and Gavin Barwell, recent junior ministers with that brief, achieved nothing — if we also assume the brief was to procure an adequate supply of new homes, in the private sector or ‘social’ one, which the ‘just about managing’ could afford. The number of affordable homes built in 2015-16 was just 32,000, half that built in the previous year and the lowest since 1992. But action is coming — apparently. ‘We will fix the broken housing market,’ declares Mrs May, mustard-keen on fixing broken markets, ‘to build a new generation of council homes right across the country.’ It was left to lieutenants to explain that there was no new target or new money behind this beyond the 40,000 homes and £1.4 billion mentioned in last year’s Autumn Statement, and no new ideas beyond unspecified reform of compulsory purchase.