Polling shows that for voters under 35, cost of living and housing affordability is their top issue in mind – and the dream of home ownership has been fuelling a huge shift towards Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.
Labour have very little to offer on this vital question, but that matters little when the Conservatives have consistently failed to deliver an effective and sustained increase in housing supply.
Unless there is something uniquely flighty about English landlords, the international evidence does not give credence to MPs’ fears that dropping Section 21 is going to cause an exodus from the private rental sector.
When we compare ourselves to countries with a similar level of prosperity, the truth hits home: the cost of housing in the UK is 57 per cent higher than in Austria, for example, and 36 per cent higher than in Canada.
Under my plan, the nation gets new houses providing a better quality of life, and opportunity for the younger generations to own their property, ensuring future happiness for many people.
This could lay the foundation for a rollout of proportional property taxes beyond developers to homeowners. Councils could abolish the regressive and outdated council tax system and instead bring in their own local taxes.
We should not forget that we are not immune to what happens in global markets, and must remember to take a comparative perspective.
Ill-conceived policies, such as the new legal maxima on window sizes, alienate voters and make the challenge of addressing this urgent public health concern that much more difficult. There are much easer and more effective solutions.
Today half of our country’s university grads are able only to tread water. The era of aspiration appears to be over, and the Prime Minister has a rapidly shrinking window to change that perception before the election.
The Opposition currently talks a big game on devolution and planning reform. But for their actions to meet the scale of the challenge, the prize, and their own rhetoric, they will need a new approach.
Let us reaffirm our commitment to not just building more of the right homes, but rekindling the Conservative spirit of innovation, spreading opportunity, and, above all, believing in our people and in their dreams.
A liberal society that respects private property must oppose these wretched restrictions with the utmost force. Only then will it truly respect the sanctity of each owner himself.
A simple change in the Finance Bill could extend our world-leading pro-investment regime for plant and machinery to investment in new brownfield housing, and spur development in many sites currently sitting idle.
Home ownership is a fundamental cornerstone of conservatism, and everyone must be given the opportunity to reach this life milestone through hard work and determination.
This has become an increasingly important issue for voters – especially swing voters and for none more so than the young, amongst whom housing now competes with the economy as one of the single most important issues.