The real ticking time bomb for the Tories is home ownership

Allister Heath in The Telegraph

There is not much that the French do better than us these days when it comes to economics. Housing is the glaring, humiliating exception: for the first time in a generation, France’s homeownership rate has overtaken Britain’s.

When I first stumbled upon this remarkable fact, I could almost not believe it. Isn’t Britain supposed to be weirdly obsessed with home ownership, unlike our happy-go-lucky continental neighbours who, we are endlessly told, are perfectly content to rent?

But the statistics are true: while we have been plunged into an intensifying housing crisis that has locked millions of young people out of the market and forced others to live in over-priced rabbit hutches, the French have been quietly building an ownership society that would have made Lady Thatcher proud. The desire to own the roof over one’s head, so powerfully described in the Prime Minister’s Conservative party speech yesterday, is a universal urge, shared even by voters in not so socialist France.

It is therefore shocking that just 63.3 per cent of English households now own their own home, down from 70.9 per cent in 2003 and back to levels last seen three decades ago. In stark contrast, home ownership has beenshooting up in France, rising from 60.5 per cent in 2007 to 64.3 per cent in 2013. British and US commentators who believe that home ownership is passe and that we must all join Generation Rent need to look beyond the English-speaking world.

The UK is now well below the European Union average: across the 28 member states, 70 per cent of households are owner-occupiers. This is an extraordinary reversal which goes to the heart of David Cameron’s vision for an aspirational meritocracy.

The Prime Minister’s speech was a powerful restatement of the small-c conservative case for an opportunity society, as opposed to the Left’s obsession with equality of outcomes: he wants anybody who works hard and behaves responsibly to get ahead in life, regardless of background or ethnicity. He wants renters to become owners, and employees to become employers, which is exactly what a Tory prime minister who cares about social mobility should be saying.

Yet he understands not just the extent to which modern Britain has become an aspirational, individualistic society (a reality that Jeremy Corbyn cannot grasp), but also that aspiration without hope is debilitating (a concept that the left is more at ease with). One of the most moving phrases in his speech yesterday was his description of “children with their noses pressed to the window as they watch the world moving ahead without them”.

Given the importance of home ownership to the British dream, the government must do much more to fix our homeownership crisis. This is not just the right thing to do; it is also a matter of life or death for the Conservative party itself. With Labour firmly captured by the hard Left, it is at least conceivable that a Tory party that bestrides the common ground could return to levels of support last seen in the 1980s, and win the next two general elections.

Three main obstacles lie in the way of this Tory dream: in the short-term, the party could be destroyed by the European question; in the medium-term, it could be derailed by the next economic crisis; but in the longer-term the ongoing housing crisis could kill off Britain’s ownership society, changing our national culture and shifting the electorate back into the arms of the Left.

Politics is complicated, of course, with many variables explaining how people vote; but it is clear that housing status is one of the central determinants. When YouGov surveyed 100,000 general election voters, it discovered that the Tories led Labour by 47-23 per cent among those who own their homes outright, and by 42-29 per cent among those with mortgages. But the parties were almost tied among private renters, with Labour enjoying a 25-point lead among social tenants. Another seven-point decline in the homeownership rate would cost the Tories dozens of seats; an increase could put Labour out of power for a generation.

It used to be argued that Britain’s changing demographics and Labour’s supposed stronghold on the ethnic minority vote meant that the Tories were doomed. This is nonsense: the Tories are starting to crack sections of this electorate, with one poll suggesting they may even have won a plurality of the Hindu and Sikh vote for the first time in May. Mr Cameron’s push for a colour-blind society in Manchester can only have helped build on this extraordinary achievement. The real ticking time bomb for the Tories is home ownership.

Britain’s housing crisis is one of under-supply: for the past two decades at least, far too few homes have been built. But while the problem is easy to identify, tackling it is fiendishly difficult given the vested interests involved. Redefining “affordable housing” as homes that can be owned, not just rented, is a small step in the right direction. The deal with housing associations to extend the right to buy will also help. But more is needed.

Remarkably, 354,700 new homes were built in France last year, compared with 140,880 across the UK, a pathetically inadequate number barely half of that required. The French were actually bitterly disappointed with their own performance: their recent average has been around 400,000 homes a year.

Mr Cameron is right, therefore, to be calling for a national crusade for house-building. State-owned brownfield sites must urgently be made available for development, though this will not be a panacea. A further liberalisation of the planning laws will also be required, and one final taboo tackled: we need to accept than not all Green Belt land is worth preserving.

We shouldn’t build on forests, of course, but swathes of what is classified as Green Belt isn’t even green: plenty of derelict land, quarries and ugly, unattractive sites are also wrongly protected. Some of this could be converted into parks and homes with gardens and the right infrastructure, benefiting hundreds of thousands of families. For their own sake, Tory councillors and MPs need to start embracing sensible, well-managed development: if not, the party will soon find out that it is either on the side of aspiring homeowners, or it is nothing.