May builds lead on Jez’s lost ground

HOUSING is in crisis when rents are up, ownership is falling, homelessness is rising and new building is down.

Too many families can’t find or afford a decent place to live, while Housing Benefit, a taxpayer subsidy for landlords, tops £27billion – that’s more than Britain’s combined contributions to international development and the European Union.

I raise at random the woeful state of housing in Britain today and could just as legitimately pick the perilous fate of the NHS, rising numbers unable to afford a decent life, the social care nightmare, pay packet-draining Government cuts, insecurity at work or a big education squeeze on its way.

Yet a Tory PM and Conservative Government responsible, in part or wholly, for each of the economic and social ills itemised above is as many as 18 points ahead of Labour in the polls and just seized the Copeland seat in Cumbria from Jeremy Corbyn.

When the country’s going to the dogs under the Tories and it’s Labour in the doghouse with voters, the party and its leader need to look deep into their souls.

Corbyn’s call to unite and not give up on him would carry more weight if the veteran loner looked and sounded a winner. It’s true many Labour MPs never gave him a chance and last summer’s coup pushed Labour further behind.

Shadow Housing Minister John Healey justifiably accused the Tories of “failing to get a grip” when fewer homes in England were built last year than the year before and at 140,650 is 20% below Labour’s 176,640 peak in 2007. And David Cameron’s five-year ConDem coalition built fewer than any peacetime Government since the 1920s. Labour’s record in office was flawed, particularly on constructing anywhere near enough council houses, though it was good at modernising existing properties. But two million new homes between 1997 and 2010, including a one million jump in families owning their own place, is a history May’s unlikely to match. But does anybody care what Labour says and the Tories do when the people of Copeland just endorsed a party destroying the local NHS? The most telling response to a Labour disaster was from Dave Prentis, Unison’s general secretary, who demanded Corbyn explain how he’ll deliver the Labour Government ordinary people deserve. Labour’s decline didn’t, of course, start with this leader. But it lost Copeland under him not Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Foot, Smith, Blair, Brown or Miliband. So what are you going to do, Mr Corbyn? More of the same isn’t an option.

The party and its leader must look into their souls