Lib/Dems split on housing

Before discussing what the Lib/Dems said about housing today, let me nail my own colours to the mast. We need more houses, in the right place, with adequate road and rail capacity for people to get to and from them. I support infrastructure-led development on Brownfield sites. 


It is to the credit of the Lib/Dems that their party conference has had a genuine debate about one of the most difficult issues facing Britain - the need for new housing.

I'm not sure, however, that the way in which they discussed it was quite so much to their credit.

Sir Ed Davey's Lib/Dem leadership has been trying to use housing as a "Wedge" issue to take Conservative seats in by-elections by appealing to the most extreme opponents of new development - the ones who are not so much NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) as BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.)

This has generated a revolt led by the part of their party must likely to be harmed by "Don't put one brick on top of another" policies - the Young Liberals, who were apparently seen wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Build More Bloody Houses."

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron was brought in to attack the party's youth wing for wanting to build more houses as "pure Thatcherism." Guido Fawkes reports on his speech and the reaction here:

Tim Farron Turns Against "Thatcherite" Liberal Youth – Guido Fawkes (order-order.com).

Different factions within the Lib/Dems put out leaflets attacking one another's position on housing in the sort of terms they usually use for denouncing the other parties, leaflets like this:



     













I have to take issue with the last line of the above leaflet. They're certainly right that targets don't build houses, but Liberal Democrat councils don't build houses either - they are more likely to try to stop them being built.

The conference passed the pro-development position - which if it was allowed to be implemented, would move the Lib/Dems from being the most anti-development to the most pro-development of the major political parties.

I won't hold my breath waiting for this to happen - though the shot across the bows that the Young Liberals have given to the BANANA faction within their party is probably a good thing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more