The Tories don’t care about generation rent

For millennials like me, the prospect of owning a home is a pipe dream. Soaring rental costs and crippling bills make saving for a deposit impossible. The reality is that, as a friend said to me recently, our best chance of getting a foot on the housing ladder is when a home-owning family member pops their clogs. We’re far from alone. Yet the Tory leadership contenders have nothing to offer those who hope one day to buy a house.

Perhaps it’s not much of a surprise that this is an issue the Tories are ignoring: Boris Johnson’s government was elected, in part, on a manifesto pledge to build 300,000 new houses – something former housing secretary Michael Gove ruled out while he was still in post. The country is facing a housing crisis – but the Tory leadership candidates have yet to speak with any real urgency about it. Rishi Sunak has pledged to ‘do whatever it takes to build housing that is affordable and plentiful’, but only after previously saying he would tighten up green belt building laws, at a time when Britain is crying out for a surge in affordable housing.