Burnham's hopes needs a roof over every head

Building council houses could be the key to Andy Burnham extending his Downing Street tenancy.

The United Kingdom's putative Prime Minister promising to revive the security and affordability of local authority dwellings in his Manchester speech was a decent start in the People's History Museum, where the working-class struggle for democracy, fairness and equality is celebrated.

As the motto of the courageous women of the Suffragette movement, commemorated in the inspiring collections, declared, what really counts are "deeds not words".

But acknowledgement of the economic and social cost of far, far fewer council houses and a vow to start constructing again on a significant scale was encouraging. The number of council houses, according to a UK Parliament research paper, plummeted to 1.7million from 5million since Margaret Thatcher initiated her right to buy at heavily discounted rates in an attempt to transform Labour voters into Conservatives with a public asset-stripping political programme.

Winners were sitting tenants enjoying lottery wins, many of those homes since resold and a significant proportion subsequently ironically let back to the very councils forced to sell them, at the cost of families locked out down the line.

Wales and Scotland's national governments banned cut-price sales but in England the stock continues to dwindle despite waiting lists topping seven figures, leaving those unable to afford to buy at the mercy of a rentier class busy bleating about Labour's Renters' Rights Act. Objecting to the ending of no-fault evictions tells us everything we need to know and fear about the greedy self-interest of lobbying landlords.

Labour tightening up sales is a necessary foundation of rebuilding or constructing new council houses, otherwise it would be like running a bath without a plug if local authorities were forced to sell fresh properties within three years, destroying incentives for them to do the right thing.

Some smarter, visionary folk in Burnham's inner circle want the – as I write – PM-in-waiting to devise a radical transformation plan to switch into permanent bricks and mortar a £39billion housing benefit bill that is currently acting as a subsidy for landlords charging sky-high rents to lower-income tenants.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation noted the private rented sector in lower-cost coastal and ex-industrial towns in England's North and Midlands grew considerably in recent decades, underpinned by buy-to-let landlordism where absentee investors enjoyed rock-bottom entry costs and higher yields by stuffing people in poor-quality places. And that market was underpinned by housing benefit public subsidies, so £3 in every £10 of private rent paid in Blackpool and Hartlepool was from taxpayers as is over £2.50 in every £10 paid in places including Hull, Great Yarmouth, Hastings, Oldham, Wolverhampton, Bradford and Sunderland.

A bold and visionary building programme would be required or some, perhaps many, of those on waiting lists will be old or dead before they receive their keys to a prized council house. In the 45 years since 1981, only 250,000 council houses were built. In the 35 years between 1946 and 1981 the figure was five million.

Turn the clock back anywhere near where it was and Burnham would deserve more than his Covid coat hanging in the People's History Museum. All Labour leaders at some point summon the ghost of Clement Attlee, justifiably hailing the Herculean achievements of a post-war Labour Government which out of the ruins created the NHS, founded a modern welfare state and nationalised rail, coal and power. Attlee also built around a million homes, more than 85% of which were social housing to replace bombed ruins.

One of the persistent concerns about the current drive for 1.5million new houses over the five-year Parliament, a goal that will almost inevitably be missed anyway, is that social housing, dispiritingly, feels like an afterthought rather than a priority.

Burnham's desire for hope in every heart must be built on a decent roof over every head.