Save our takeaways!

Rishi Sunak’s strategy for solving Britain’s crippling housing shortage has been revealed: converting redundant takeaway restaurants into homes. It was a strange role reversal for Sunak, so recently cast as the potential saviour of many of these outlets during his Rishi’s dishes period. Yet fast forward three years and here he is as Prime Minister announcing – not just the demise of many of these places – but their apparent imminent demolition in favour of a million new homes.

The conversation of old takeaways was, significantly, the headline detail that was singled out in pre-announcement media briefings. And the reason is surely that everyone knows what a struggling and dated example looks like. We may not all have an abandoned factory or rusting industrial works on our doorsteps but chances are there’s a Jade Garden or a Taste of the Raj that looks long past it – and so is the kind of brownfield site we can universally relate to.