Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The myth of the beautiful green belt

Most of it doesn’t look anything like this. (Credit: Getty Images)

What a nonsense debate the fight over the green belt has become. Today Keir Starmer has been – rightly – stoking it up arguing that councils should be given the freedom to build on green belt land. The Labour leader told the Times: ‘It cannot be reduced to a simple discussion of will you or will you not build on the green belt. This is why it’s important for local areas to have the power to decide where housing is going to be.’

The green belt holds a special, if strange, place in the British psyche. Its primary function is to prevent urban sprawl, rather than safeguard particularly green and pleasant land. While some of it is beautiful, a lot of the green belt is just green in colour. Intensively-farmed agricultural land isn’t that green at all, for example. 

The distinction seems to be lost on most people. So whenever planning reforms are afoot, or even more nascent than that, politicians become very energised about ‘protecting the local green belt’ because they know exactly what their constituents envisage when that term is used.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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