Labour’s Yimby plan could lock the Tories out of power for good

As opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer long struggled to define what ‘Starmerism’ is, other than ‘not Corbynism’ and ‘not Toryism’. Last Autumn, he belatedly stumbled across a policy theme which he has since tried to make his own: ‘Yimbyism’, a positive ‘Yes In My Back Yard’ attitude to development: the antidote to Nimbyism. 

In her first major speech on economic policy, Chancellor Rachel Reeves picked up this ‘Yimby’ theme in order to bolster her pro-growth credentials. Policy announcements include bringing back mandatory housebuilding targets, removing green belt protection from bits that are clearly not green (the ‘grey belt’), and overturning the ban on onshore wind. 

We have, of course, been here before. We have heard similar Yimby rhetoric many times, even if the specific policies differ. In the years of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, housing minister Nick Boles tried to position himself as a Yimby firebrand, who was not afraid to pick a fight with the Nimby lobby.