In defence of Labour’s ‘communist land grab’

We will find out in Rachel Reeves’ first budget on 30 October whether Labour really does intend to wage a war on wealth. It is all too easy to see the Chancellor playing to her gallery by imposing punitive taxes which are designed more to achieve social engineering than to raise revenue, and which stifle entrepreneurism and make the country poorer in the process.

But there is one issue on which I am afraid I will not be joining the barricades. The government is reported to be considering capping the price which landowners in the green belt can receive when selling their land to feed Labour’s proposed house-building boom. Landowners, in other words, would not be able to make huge profits on land which they had bought at agricultural value. Instead, like the landowners whose land was compulsorily purchased for the post-war new towns, they would be compensated at a much lower level.