Around The Houses

Mrs Mummy, were you uncertain about letting your little boy go to Ibiza? Well, you should have had no fear, because he was safe in the hands of Angela Rayner. The teenagers on Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents used to have some adventures. But none of them ever ran into the then Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

Rayner is back now, to slay the dragon of Right to Buy. Margaret Thatcher's assault on council housing is the one thing that her supporters still feel able to defend unconditionally. But in reality, it created the Housing Benefit racket, and it used the gigantic gifting of capital assets by the State to enable the beneficiaries to enter the property market ahead of private tenants, or of people still living at home, who in either case had saved for their deposits. What, exactly, was or is conservative or Tory about that? Or about moving in the characters from Shameless either alongside, or even in place of, the respectable working class?

Shameless began under Tony Blair's model for this Labour Government. The fight goes on. But whether on this, or on Grenfell Tower, or on anything else to do with housing, if the Government wanted to have any credibility, then it needs to withdraw the whip from Jas Athwal, not an unimaginable figure, but still a far less probable one, in the era between Aneurin Bevan and Michael Heseltine. In fact, who did own his present properties in those days? For 10 years until this July, he was Leader of the Council.