The Green Belt was a Labour idea. Look at it, and of course it was. But it is now a giant subsidy to horseyculture and golf. The State decrees and pays that more of Surrey be occupied by golf courses than by housing.
Still, NIMBYs vote. As of today, expect them to vote Lib Dem, because expect the Lib Dems, 30 years old on Saturday just gone, to make sure that they do. So much for rural Radicalism. From that quarter, anyway. There is a world elsewhere.
We need the Land Value Tax. With the Universal Basic Income. Set within Modern Monetary Theory, so that the Jobs Guarantee guaranteed the bargaining power of trade unions.
We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes, with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end.
We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents, with rent controls, with action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, and with an immediate and broadly based inquiry into Grenfell Tower.
And we need a statutory requirement of planning permission for change of use if it were proposed to turn a primary dwelling into a secondary dwelling, a working family home into a weekend or holiday home. That would set the pattern for the empowerment of the rural working class, assisted both by the Land Value Tax and by a windfall tax on the supermarkets in order to fund agriculture and small business, with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.
Above all, we need to be prepared for a General Election this spring or early summer. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.
We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes, with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end.
We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents, with rent controls, with action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, and with an immediate and broadly based inquiry into Grenfell Tower.
And we need a statutory requirement of planning permission for change of use if it were proposed to turn a primary dwelling into a secondary dwelling, a working family home into a weekend or holiday home. That would set the pattern for the empowerment of the rural working class, assisted both by the Land Value Tax and by a windfall tax on the supermarkets in order to fund agriculture and small business, with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.
Above all, we need to be prepared for a General Election this spring or early summer. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.
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