Labour’s rock star
Can Corbyn reach the top?
Crises like this call for strong, assured leadership, said Frank Furedi on Spiked. Alas, that has been in short supply lately. Kensington and Chelsea Council was vilified for its slow response to the Grenfell fire. And now Camden Council has swung to the other extreme, needlessly spreading alarm with its “panicked” evacuations. The towers in question certainly require urgent remedial work to make them safer, but was it really necessary to turf people out of their homes at 8.30 at night, without warning, forcing many to camp in local halls?
The least we can do now, said Tim Harford in the FT, is learn the lessons of the Grenfell fire – “as we did not” after the similar, but less lethal, Lakanal House fire in south London eight years ago, where combustible cladding also played a role. But as well as leading to an overhaul of fire safety rules, this disaster should also prompt a rethink of the “entire rotten edifice of British housing policy”. Decades of policy failure have left us with a massive shortfall of affordable housing, a situation that has left many people on low incomes trapped in substandard properties. The only answer, said Diane Coyle in the same paper, is to build “much more” social housing. The market is not going to solve this problem for us. We need to give councils the power to borrow to build – a safe option given that interest rates are low and councils would gain a secure return from future rents. We should also consider some other sensible reforms, such as allowing councils to levy a higher rate of council tax on long-empty properties, or raising the stamp duty on purchases by overseas buyers.
The reality is that “housing wealth is hugely undertaxed in Britain”, said Jenni Russell in The Times. “A £10m property that would be taxed at £40,000 a year in New York pays just over £2,000 here.” Introducing some form of graduated mansion tax on the country’s most expensive properties would generate revenue that could be spent on expanding the supply of affordable homes. “David Cameron always said his donors wouldn’t wear a mansion tax. But tragedies change minds and create political space. May must act.”