Is Burnham’s plan for a housing revolution anything more than a pipedream? | John Harris
Nearly 2 million children are housed in dire conditions, anxious families are living out of carrier bags. There’s little sign of the hope our PM promised Two days after the Christmas of 2024, Andy Burnham put up a post…
Source: The Guardian ·
Nearly 2 million children are housed in dire conditions, anxious families are living out of carrier bags. There’s little sign of the hope our PM promised Two days after the Christmas of 2024, Andy Burnham put up a post on X that linked to a piece about housing in the Guardian. The then mayor of Greater Manchester, who was beginning to find his voice as a frank critic of Keir Starmer’s new government, did not mess about: “The Government should make building hundreds of thousands of council homes its defining purpose,” he said. “No other policy, achievable within a parliament, would have greater social and economic benefits.” In his first Labour conference speech as party leader and prime minister, Burnham reprised much the same argument, promising “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar era”. But by that point, he had also served notice that his commitment to a…