How Theresa May’s reforming ministers are constrained

When Theresa May gave her big housing speech today, in front of a rather strange fake brick backdrop that made the Prime Minister appear to be emerging from a chimney, she was trying to speak to two audiences. The first was those who believe, as she says she does, that the housing crisis is one of the biggest barriers to social justice in this country. The second was those who may agree with the first sentiment in abstract, but who are very worried about inappropriate development and destruction of our green and pleasant land. It’s a tricky game, playing good-cop, bad-cop all by yourself, but that’s what the Prime Minister had to do in order to announce anything at all on housing.

She set the scene by writing a very gentle and sympathetic piece in the newspaper that has campaigned most vociferously against any perceived erosions of the protections that our green and pleasant land enjoys: the Telegraph.