The Tory leadership contest is gathering pace with voting due to open up to the membership in less than 24 hours. Kemi Badenoch was quick to secure a top slot in Wednesday’s Telegraph, while rival Robert Jenrick gathered supporters together in the heart of Westminster for yet another campaign event today. The ex-housing secretary went heavy on – you guessed it – housing, and was certainly pulling no punches about his political opponents…
‘We are 1.3 million homes short of the number that we need,’ Jenrick declared from London’s Old Queen Street today. He went on, blasting mayor Sadiq Khan – and his lefty Labour government – over the city’s housing crisis:
The Labour government seems to think that you can fix things by declaring arbitrary targets. But as always with central planning, they’re going to build homes in the wrong places. They’ve imposed a 1,300 per cent increase in Redcar and a 623 per cent increase in Burnley. Well, in London and Birmingham they’re slashing the housing targets – to save the blushes of failing Labour mayors.
Ouch. Don’t hold back!
The leadership hopeful went on, dubbing the current planning system as ‘sclerotic’ before adding that the Tories ‘have to be the party that takes on the planning system and improves it.’ He fumed today that:
The market is screaming at us to build in London, in Manchester, in our big city centres. Precisely the opposite policy to the one being pursued by this Labour government. Rather than settling for urban sprawl, we need to build densely and we need to build beautifully. Our plan is a simple one: to unpick the housing deficit and ensure that we add millions of homes that we need across the country to add them in London and Manchester and Birmingham and our other world class cities.
How interesting. But will Labour’s mayors take note? Jenrick’s attack on Khan comes after new research by property development company Aprao revealed this year that less than 150,000 new homes have been built across London since the lefty politician became mayor – the smallest uplift in new home delivery of all English regions. In a rather damning statement, Aprao’s CEO lamented in May: ‘Regardless of your political allegiances, there’s no disputing the fact that the London property market has slumped somewhat since Sadiq Khan became mayor, both with respect to house price growth and the increased delivery of new homes.’ Oh dear. It seems that on ‘failing Labour mayors’, Jenrick may have a point.
Will the wannabe leader’s housing pitch convince the Tory membership to flock to him in the upcoming ballot? Stay tuned…
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