Should this man accept a £75,000 ‘bribe’ from George Osborne?

Meet Maurice Mcleod. He’s a proper leftie, who has lived in council accommodation all his life. He pays rent for it — about £480 a month for his rather down-at-heel one-bedroom flat in Tooting. Yet due to the London property bubble it is now valued at £150,000 and if he wants to buy it he can claim a £75,000 discount thanks to George Osborne’s enhanced right-to-buy. On a bad month, Maurice says his net assets dip below £750, so he could be worth £75,000 overnight – just by taking Osborne’s (borrowed) shilling. He has written about his dilemma in the new Spectator, out today.

Maurice loathes right-to-buy, seeing it as a divisive Tory policy that has torn the heart out of council estates that were intended for the whole community rather than to enclose the poor. Furthermore, he loathes the whole rationale behind it: that a man ought to ‘move on’ in life buy buying ever-bigger houses in ever-leafier areas.