Why a return to Mrs T’s Right to Buy home scheme will always be loathed by the Left – and loved by voters
ANYONE who is old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher’s glory days will have been cheered by the news that Right to Buy is back.
Boris Johnson is planning to revive her flagship policy to help young people on to the housing ladder.
Of all the legacies of the 1980s, none has more obviously changed Britain for the better than the sale of council houses, which transformed more than 2.5 million tenants into proud homeowners.
Yet the job Mrs Thatcher began, of creating a propertyowning democracy, remains unfinished. Forty years on, about 17 per cent of households in England still live in social housing, as tenants of local authorities or housing associations.
Now the Prime Minister, who came of age during those heady years, hopes to offer a new generation — the so-called ‘generation rent’ — the opportunity to own property.
Derided
Some five million people who rent their homes from housing associations will be given the right to buy at a discount.
Of course, the usual suspects on the Left have derided the idea. But what they cannot escape is the fact that Right to Buy is still regarded as one of Mrs Thatcher’s most popular policies.
And even though there is a world of difference between Thatcher’s Britain and the country today under Johnson — not least that property prices are so prohibitively expensive in comparison to the 1980s — any government help to set foot on the housing ladder will be welcomed by voters.
The new policy will be aimed particularly at the Red Wall regions in northern England, where in the past, Labourdominated local authorities did their best to discourage tenants from buying their homes.
In Scotland and Wales, Leftwing devolved administrations have long since abolished the Right to Buy.
The idea of extending the policy to cover all subsidised housing first emerged in the 2015 Conservative manifesto and has been a commitment ever since. But neither David Cameron nor Theresa May delivered on their promises. Meanwhile, rocketing property prices have pushed home ownership ever further out of reach of young families.
Boris, unlike some of his predecessors, has always been passionate about enabling those on lower incomes to buy their own homes. One source says the Prime Minister ‘has a fixation on the young not being able to get on to the housing ladder’.
After his landslide victory in 2019, Boris first tried loosening the planning laws to allow more housing development. But that scheme had to be shelved when it ran into backbench resistance after last June’s shock byelection defeat in Chesham and Amersham, where voters objected to the relaxed rules.
Now Boris has ordered his staff to come up with a workable scheme to end discrimination against the 2.5 million households who are tenants of housing associations. They, too, will be entitled to buy their homes.
The existing Right to Buy rules, which apply to council tenants, do not extend to those who rent from housing associations. The new plan is expected to sweep away these restrictions and give all public sector tenants equal rights.
What Boris has grasped, like Margaret Thatcher before him, is the incredible pride and happiness that only living under your own roof can confer. There is no more powerful motivation than the desire to own your own home.
The Declaration of Independence begins with a statement of ‘certain unalienable rights’, among them ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. But Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the text, borrowed it from the English philosopher John Locke, whose original words were: ‘Life, liberty and estate.’ Locke knew the right to own ‘estate’, or property, is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
When Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wasted no time in passing the Housing Act 1980, which enshrined the Right to Buy in law. One in three households living in council housing was suddenly given the chance to acquire their own property.
Discounts of up to 50 per cent were offered according to how long they had paid rent, along with 100 per cent mortgages.
It was a revolution. Labour hated it, but the voters loved it. Mrs Thatcher herself introduced the new legislation in a special television broadcast.
‘If you have been a council tenant for at least three years,’ she told a disbelieving but delighted nation, ‘you will have the right, by law, to buy your house.’ With a characteristic nod of approval, the Iron Lady added: ‘And that’s that.’
By the time of the next election in 1983, which Mrs Thatcher won by a landslide, a quarter of a million council homes had been bought under Right to Buy — and millions more would follow.
Popularity
In the teeth of Labour opposition, the Conservatives had established themselves as the party of homeowners.
Under Neil Kinnock, Labour was forced to accept that the Right to Buy was here to stay. Its popularity later persuaded Tony Blair to embrace the policy.
Despite the conversion of the Blairites, the Labour Left has always loathed the Right to Buy. Some MPs have selfinterested motives, having benefited personally from council housing. For decades, the late Frank Dobson, a former Health Secretary under Blair, rented a three-bed flat in a magnificent mansion block in Bloomsbury, paying a heavily subsidised rent to Camden Council — of which he had once been the Left-wing leader.
When this cosy arrangement emerged in 2011, Dobson said he ‘could not afford’ to rent privately, despite having enjoyed a ministerial salary and pension.
Other Left-wingers quietly embraced Right to Buy. In 2016, the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, was revealed by the Mail to have bought his council flat in the Barbican for half its market value, then estimated at £2 million. Mrs Thatcher’s old enemy, a lifelong Marxist, had no scruples about taking advantage of her signature policy.
Hostile
The truth is that even socialists are not immune to the pleasures of home ownership. I have no objection to them exercising their rights like anyone else — as long as they don’t pull up the ladder behind them. Unfortunately, the Labour Party seems to have turned its back on aspiring homeowners.
Under Sir Keir Starmer, Labour is much more hostile to property owners than it was under Sir Tony Blair. Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Housing Secretary, has denounced Boris Johnson’s proposal to extend the Right to Buy to include tenants of housing associations.
Ms Nandy claims the plan is ‘desperate’ and proof of a ‘tired government’. She adds: ‘These proposals would worsen the shortage of affordable homes.’
Labour pretends that Right to Buy is to blame for the housing shortage. But this is a myth. Neither Mrs Thatcher nor Mr Johnson is responsible for the failure to build enough affordable homes. The fault lies with local authorities, many of them Labour or Liberal Democrat, which frittered away the proceeds of council house sales on their pet projects and monstrous bureaucracy instead.
By extending Right to Buy to millions more people, Boris is on to a winner — and Labour knows it. He doesn’t claim this policy alone will solve the housing crisis. But rebooting Right to Buy is a very good start.
Like his mentor, Margaret Thatcher, Boris instinctively shares the British people’s love of life, liberty — and property.