This was first published in the Young Fabians journal Anticipations
Anyone reading Red Brick is engaged enough in politics to know the extent of Labour’s housing achievements one year into government. Planning reform, shake-ups in private renting and leasehold, £39 billion into social housebuilding, Labour’s record has been impressive, and every stakeholder I speak with as Red Brick’s editor is blown away by the new Government’s progress.
The crucial question for anyone in politics, however, is ‘so what’? Two critical factors impede Labour’s ability to turn housing success into political reward. The first is that the Government’s rhetoric is focused on outputs rather than outcomes. Even if Labour builds 1.5 million homes, turns around social housebuilding, and reforms problematic tenures, the price of buying and renting will continue to rise, even if this increase would have been lower had Labour not acted so boldly.
The second is that Labour is likely to miss its headline targets. Housebuilding runs in cycles of five years or longer, and even after a sprint of bold reforms, housing starts in the first quarter of 2025 were 9% lower than in 2024 due to a long tail of Tory failure.
In this context, Labour needs to consider the right framework with which to talk about housing, to future-proof the likely missing of the 1.5 million homes goal and to create a cohesive narrative of its success in this key policy area.
The first step of this is to consider how voters interact with the housing crisis. First of these is through the lens of cost, when asked about the most important housing issue facing Britain, 50% of voters picked the cost of renting, followed by 49% identifying the cost of buying (Leeds Building Society). The other way is through the housing crisis’ visible impacts, most notably around homelessness and rough sleeping, with 46% of people thinking that homelessness is a significant issue in their local area (Centre for Homelessness Impact/Ipsos).
To address the first issue, Labour needs to pivot its discourse on tenure reform to a cost-of-living issue. For instance, while Labour campaigners frequently bring up ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions as the key measure in Renters’ Rights Bill, voters look even more favourably on limiting the number of rent increases per year (70% support) or enabling tenants to challenge rent increases (70%), than ending Section 21 (58%) (Ipsos).
At the same time, Labour needs to pivot its housebuilding narrative from talking about housing as a good in and of itself, to a laser focus in both policy and communications on the homes which will deliver the most social good.
An average voter may not connect a 3-bed newbuild with addressing rough sleeping, whereas it is easy to argue that a social home helps a long-term private renter, a prospective home buyer, as well as those with greatest housing need. While voters are supportive of new homes in general, they are even more enthusiastic about building when it is affordable, on brownfield sites, and in well-connected locations (YouGov/CPRE). Labour cannot only say that is building more homes, it also has to make a case about the value added by those homes.
‘Backing the builders not the blockers’, worked well at the last election. But, as the Government, Labour can credibly be viewed as the establishment, and needs to be careful about siding with unpopular vested interests. Only 24% of voters have a positive view of landlords (YouGov), and only 2% trust developers when it comes to large-scale housing applications (Grosvenor). Meanwhile, the public see developers as second only to the Tories’ in their responsibility for the housing crisis, with 63% viewing housebuilders as partially or largely responsible for causing the country’s housing issues (YouGov).
The Government recently won national headlines for fining developers for anti-competitive practices, showing how even moderate moves here can win broad acclaim. Reforms to enforce social housing requirements on ‘grey belt’ sites and diversify the housing industry by encouraging SME housebuilders can build on this narrative that Labour is taking on unpopular ‘vested interests’ in housing.
Meanwhile, across the aisle are the Conservatives, who failed to take action for 15 years, allowed costs to rise, and failed to act on poor behaviour on developers or landlords (many of the latter group making up their benches). And waiting in the wings is Reform UK, whose leadership is replete with property tycoons such as Nick Candy and Richard Tice. The contrast message could not be staring us any more clearly in the face.
One year into Government, and Labour’s laundry list of housing achievements is a mile long. But to reap electoral gain we need to rewrite this into the poetry of campaigning. Tackling costs and vested interests alike can and should be our mantra to show voters that Labour is on their side, that Labour represents a break from the past, and that our greatest electoral contenders would threaten this progress.
One reply on “How Labour can turn housing outputs into electoral outcomes”
and yet so far much of what has or is been delivered, including reforms in the PRS but especially for social housing residents are legacy issues from the previous government that could have a much greater ‘Labour’ imprint. Low cost, high impact issues, like including Stigma in the direction to the RSH about competence and conduct that could help balance out some of the more problematic things that the government is doing that make addressing the cost of living crisis worse e.g. Rent Convergence. It seems to me that part of the problem is an unwillingness to address the need for redistribution of ‘the cake’ whether or not growth is possible.