Housing; part of why am I conservative?
To say the previous 14 years have not been a record of glory would, to be frank, be understating it.
The nominally conservative government has been so poor that when I tell people I am conservative, I often cringe at the associations they will be making.
A record of austerity, skyrocketing debt, high low-skill immigration, essentially no economic growth, selling off all the government's assets, failure to reform the NHS, many geopolitical failures, constitutional reform that directly opposes the ideals of 'conservatism', cronyism—we could be here for days. The reality is, as much as you dislike the Conservative Party, I probably hate them more.
Now, to be fair to the party, there have been a couple of extenuating circumstances. Firstly, the first 5 years were a coalition. Then the Brexit vote (something that should never have happened as referendums are unconservative) derailed the business of government for many years. On top of course, COVID.
The last 14 years have been rough. However, the government's failures are largest in their inability to combat the biggest problems of the day. The reality is that the 2008 Financial Crisis damaged the UK economy far more than most are willing to admit, and I don’t believe we have repaired our economy since then.
Essentially, every trend post-2008, whether that is GDP per capita, median earnings, or productivity growth, has remained below the pre-2008 trend. At the same time, during a period of 'austerity', budget deficits are at pre-2008 levels, whilst debt is now significantly larger than it was in 2008.
Yet, the demands of the welfare state and the NHS, alongside an ageing population, mean that there will have to be significant tax rises or budget cuts if we want to maintain our standard of living.
If we do not contend with these problems, the reality is voters will swing to extreme solutions - for example, in the recent French elections where voters turned to both the extreme left and the extreme right as they felt abandoned.
This personally would be disastrous as neither the far left nor the far right values existing institutions - see, for example, Nigel Farage’s opinion on the House of Lords. They would act as arsonists to the entire system, thinking that burning it down would bring them the solutions they want.
In terms of policy, this is where it becomes intensely personal and is likely to offend many. The British economy is rotten. Since 1870, the UK has had one of the lowest investment rates amongst comparable countries.
This is, of course, multifaceted; some would say corporate governance is the problem, i.e., British companies focus more on dividends vs. reinvesting and growing their business. The result of which is the FTSE is full of old, stable, and slow businesses. But my contention is that housing is at the root of British economic woes - you could argue I subscribe to the Housing Theory of Everything.
We have for nearly 30 years propped up a bubble in the housing market through both supply restrictions and demand juicing. Extremely low interest rates during the post-2008 period, coupled with high levels of immigration and significantly below-required house building, have meant that house prices have skyrocketed. This was great if you have owned houses in this period; you have seen significant returns on your asset. This is fine in the abstract, but the reality is British society is obsessed with home ownership, far more than other european countries. This has resulted in our investment rate in productive assets being ridiculously low as people plow more and more money into buying property.
The incentive of the system is, to place all your focus on saving money to buy a house, then from there use as much of your money to pay off said house to continue the chain of buying more houses. If you have the money to buy property somewhere like London the logical plan is to turn it into a ‘House in multiple Occupation’ (HMO) - Essentially someone will buy say a 2 bed flat, they will then convert the living room into a bedroom allowing them to rent each room out individually. This allows you to charge enormous rents.
This is enabled because renters do not have other choices, so they are forced to rent progressively smaller rooms in a flat for more and more. In my opinion, this is entirely a supply issue propagated by the planning system in the UK. To build a house in the UK is a herculean task, one which will cost an arm and a leg while taking many years.
The conservative thing would be to reform the planning system to allow people to build on their land how they want to. The contention would be that doing this would allow the concreting over of the countryside and ruin our natural environment.
However, I would argue that a system could be designed to incentivise building in the most productive areas, such as cities like London or Manchester. And, building densely in those areas allows you to preserve your natural greenspaces whilst allowing your country to not become a museum.
Housing has to change in the UK. House’s cannot be at the prices they are, and rents cannot be this high. The consequence of this will be significantly depressed economic growth as more and more money is spent on non-productive assets. Alongside, major dissatisfaction amongst the youth population as they have to spend more and more of their pay to rent a place to live - Not even discussing the effects it has on depressing birth rates.
Often parroted when discussing housing is that supply and demand doesn't apply to housing markets. It is so obviously wrong but infuriating nonetheless. In practice, places that build more than demand see their rents fall; for example, in Austin, Texas, rents have decreased by 14% in the last year after a significant boost in housing supply.
Now sadly this is not actually conservative policy and the reality is neither party will actually fix the problem. This is because there is no electoral incentive to solve the problem as the fixes would likely crash house prices something a large portion of the public are obviously against
This is where the truth comes in. I am nominally ‘conservative’; I work for a Conservative Member of Parliament and, as previously discussed, hold very strong views towards tradition and heritage, such as the House of Lords. But electorally, I am a lost voter, which makes it frustrating to talk about politics. As I am quickly branded 'the conservative' and not allowed to explain the dilemma I have.
Of course, no voter is going to have a perfect match - politics is the art of the imperfect - but truly, I am lost. This is because each party in British politics has a policy I would probably steal. I, of course, oppose the constitutional vandalism the Labour Party is undergoing, but personally, I think having homeless people in the 6th richest economy is despicable (this is related to the housing point above). I think the Lib Dems are right on Proportional Representation and rejoining the single market, I think Reform are correct on their tax cuts for small businesses, I think the SNP are probably right on drug policy, and I think the Conservatives are right on crime and defence. But no party has really threaded the needle correctly on Foreign Policy.
This eclectic mix of policies leaves me in quite a pickle, in that I have to vote for a party where quite a few of its members oppose my beliefs. The list above would get me branded a 'wet' or a 'One Nation' conservative - a type of conservative that is increasingly going out of fashion as the party turns further to the right. Although personally, I would argue my brand of politics is far closer to true conservatism than the liberalism that infected the party post-Thatcher.
The other problem is that conservatism is actually quite hard to define. It is more often than not a temperament and not an ideology, as Michael Oakeshott, the conservative philosopher, says: “The conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.” Essentially, be pragmatic towards the things we currently possess but allow for slow evolution.
How this manifests in policy is impossibly difficult to spell out in a short blog like this, as the nuance would be difficult. But I would hope that this at least in short sets out that I am not the typical 'Tory' bogeyman that most would think of when considering a 24-year-old conservative who works in politics.