It's Not All Doom And Gloom

House prices are in freefall.

But amidst the understandable rejoicing at that happy fact, what about the third house for which David Cameron is charging the rest of us under parliamentary expenses, even though he had no need of a mortgage and only took one out because he could send the bill to the taxpayer?

The explosion in house prices has meant that most younger middle or upper-working-class people stand no chance of living out the middle-aged peak of their powers in properties remotely resembling the ones in which they grew up. "Bricks and mortar" do not, at least ordinarily, constitute an "investment". They constitute a place to live.

The sale of council housing, recently relaunched by David Cameron via a planted backbench question, compelled the State to make gifts of significant capital assets to people who were thus enabled to enter the property market ahead of private tenants who had saved for their deposits. And, as part of Thatcher’s invention of mass benefit dependency, it created the Housing Benefit racket, which is vastly more expensive than the maintenance of a stock of council housing.

I am a good Chestertonian in this as in most, though not quite all, matters. I would dearly love every household to have a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. But within the practicalities of these things, there is also a very strong case that each locality should have a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty centre.

Already, under New Labour, the powers that be apparently could not distinguish between the respectable working class and the characters from Shameless. So council and housing association tenants, whose rents will go up in April in line with the September inflation figure even though pensions and benefits will not, were to lose security of tenure in order that Shameless characters could be moved in next door to them, or even in place of them.

But New Labour is no more, at least outside the Coalition. Those in that actual or potential position should contact Ed Miliband or Jon Cruddas without delay.