Why didn't Labour build millions of social homes and end "right to buy" during their 13 years in power?

[Orwellian]

I know a lot of people like to blame the nasty baby eating Tories for the housing situation in this country (especially on MN) and especially Margaret Thatcher for selling off the council houses.

However, for all those who blame the Tories can I ask - why is there never any criticism of the last 13 years of Labour in which they could have build millions of social homes and got rid of right to buy but did neither. Instead they were the main protagonists of buy-to-let (especially after Brown decided to tax private pensions) which has taken millions of first time buyer homes out of circulation, enslaved millions of families to be perpetual renters and all the horrors that go with it and oversaw a housing boom based on debt which has priced out so many people?

Where is the opprobium for Labour and the mess they are partly responsible for? And just to add, that is not to say that the Tories do not bear any responsibility, of course they do, but they certainly are not to blame for the situation that arose during Labour's tenure in office.

Because they want people to work and support themselves?

Why did they not create more jobs and sort out fair taxation?

Because the 13 years that labour was in charge for were, essentially, wasted. Sure, they spunked money left right and centre at the NHS, reduced waiting times here, rebuilt a hospital there, but they also allowed productivity to slump - the result was a huge waste of money and opportunity. It's the same story with benefits, education and every other area where they fire hosed working peoples taxes. Even Tax Credits were a complicated system of giving you back what they'd already taken off you. Their economic incompetence, lack of forward planning and short term party politics has nearly bankrupted this once great country and guaranteed that our kids born today will still be paying for Blair and Brown's ministries when they are our age and have kids of their own.

Labour sat and watched the less rich end of our society getting slowly priced out of home ownership and did nothing - the irony is that there are hundreds of people on MN who think that Labour are for the poor, for the workers or for the downtrodden. The truth is, and look to their expense accounts if you don't believe me, they are only in it for one thing - to attain power and maintain power at any cost. Need support in the northern constituencies? - Easy, create an underclass, make them benefit dependant and they'll vote for you every time. There's a marginal seat that we need to win? - We'll create dozens of non-jobs and tell them the Tories will sack 'em if they ever get in power - they'll vote labour for ever more. Still need more support? - We'll ship immigrants to every corner of the Kingdom and then give 'em the vote. They'll be labour supporters 'til the day they die.

The only thing we should be grateful to Labour for was sorting out Northern Ireland for everything else, they should be gibbeted.

"Where is the opprobium for Labour and the mess they are partly responsible for?"

People aren't stupid. They voted out Labour in 2010 pretty comprehensively, even if they didn't vote anyone in quite as decisively. Traditional Labour voters still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt after the Iraq war debacle were appalled by the double-standards of everything from 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich' Mandelson, to the expenses scandal, to the bungled scrapping of the 10% tax rate... culminating in poor old Mrs Duffy showing up exactly how arrogant and out of touch the leadership had become. Party members with more grass-roots credentials - John Prescott, and Frank Field etc- were asked to think the unthinkable on housing or welfare and then had their proposals routinely kicked into the long grass in favour of glamourous stuff like wars or high finance. Didn't Prescott try to get a programme to build a million new homes off the ground once? That's why the social housing didn't get built. He was ignored.

becuase , it would have been very unpopular choice and people woud done the but so and so was allowed to

Suddenly discovered the politics thread. MrPants and Cogito are spot on. Yes, Labour missed a trick with not building lots of social housing. They were also completely wrong-footed on public opinion at the last election.

I really hoped Labour would listen to Frank Field.

One good thing Labour did was to not take us into the Euro.

I agree. I am a natural leftie (although I consider myself a floating voter) but two of the biggest mistakes made by Labour during their term in power IMO were failure to replenish housing stock and the massive expansion of university places. I also think you're right to point out that the gap between rich and poor started increasing under Labour's watch.

However, I still couldn't bring myself to vote Tory right now because of the underlying ideology, which seems to say that the 1950s family model is the only right one and the poor are responsible for their own poverty and should therefore suffer the consequences.

Agree with sunshineandbooks first para there.

Would never vote tory in a million years, I am a "natural" lefty and I find their ideology terrifying.

I didn't vote labour at the last election because of the Iraqi war.

And I didn't vote libdem either. So am fairly relaxed about slagging them all off

So actually I agree with her second paragraph as well, apart from instead of I couldn't bring myself to vote tory right now, for me it is ever.

V good observation, Orwellian.

I remember a few years ago people were buy-to-let mad. It was the thing to do. Everyone I knew was piling in.

And it wasn't just people buying to let, either, but retaining to let, so all those singletons who had bought their home cheaply a few years earlier and were now pairing up, kept their two individual houses/flats to rent out, and bought a new one. Likewise relatives of dead people were keeping their properties to rent out.

Incidentally, don't they say that Labour scandals all involve money and Tory ones sex?

The reason lefties don't get upset about this is that it does not compute with their world view of the baby eating Tories as responsible for all the wrongs of the world.

Thoughtful, considered post there Chubb.

I see people on both left and right who are willing to engage in discussion and accept that their chosen party don't have it right in all areas.

As a natural leftie I am happy to look back at past left-leaning governments and learn from the mistakes they've made, just as I'm happy to look at right-leaning government and acknowledge good policy decisions they've made. I see some natural Tory voters do the same. One of my friends - a landowning mid-60s male who has voted Conservative his whole life - is actually more critical of the current Coalition than I am.

However, unless you are actually going to examine what was right/wrong and why it just becomes a pointless diatribe rather than anything constructive.

Well mrpants covered any the labour years pretty comprehensively (although John major kick started the peace process). You may be more considered on your approach than many left leaning people, but the fact is whenever the issue if social housing comes up on mn there is a ringing silence about the failure of labour up do anything about it. In fact they extended right to buy by reducing the time period of tenancy required before a council tenant could buy their home.

Oh, what stupid arguments. The reason Labour did very little that was worthwhile during its time in power is because it is not a left wing party. It spent its entire time stopping the Tories from getting into power by moving further and further to the right itself until it was impossible for the Tories to be more right wing without looking and being unbelievably nasty and intolerant. Labour was just Tory policies but with more spending.

Because they sold out in order to get elected.

Labour tried (half heartedly) to build more houses but it was dealt with through John Prescott's pathfinder project in the NE especially. This involved the demolition of street after street of victorian terrace houses and their replacement with new homes.

As with so many things, it wasn't properly thought through. People liked their victorian houses and refurbishment wouldn't make enough money for the developer, streets became listed, the project was repeatedly challenged and costs spiralled. A lot of demolition happened but very little rebuilding.

In the SE, costs were encouraged to spiral out of anybody's control because of the economics of carrying out the development by the time the planning costs were added on.

In my view, the worst thing the labour govt did was introduce PFI. It is a total and unmitigated disaster and it has another 30 years minimum to run.

Interesting to see a political thread on MN which isn't just dominated by Labour lovers. I've often wondered why left wingers seem to like Labour so much when they have often seemed corrupt and shortsighted.

I think there is a need for a new centre- left party who are more genuine and less tied to the unions. Or is that what the LibDems were meant to be? Until they threw their lot in with the Tories. .

It's only in retrospect when I see the slash and burn of libraries, benefits for disabled/cancer patients/etc/etc I find myself wistfully thinking 'Labour wouldn't have done this', and have to remind myself Labour caused the mess in the first place.

I am a natural 'lefty' but never voted Labour (apart from for Ken as Mayor of London), as New Labour from 1997 never matched my vision of what a left wing party ought to be.

Then I got passionately angry over the war and nothing would ever persuade me to vote Labour, unless they threw Tony Blair into some outer hemisphere of space and completely renounced everything that he stood for - but now in retrospect I am just as angry at the mess of the economy (The Mandelson quote about people getting 'filthy rich' sums it up perfectly) - and the obsession with business which means we are now stuck with rotten PPP deals funding all our public services and allowing businesses to screw money out of schools, hospitals, etc.

Specifically on housing - it depresses me seeing lots of cheap commuter flats being flung up everywhere round where I live that sit empty for months as no-one wants to buy them - clearly the wrong kind of housing was being built everywhere, for a demand that simply wasn't there.

However as I'm a bit of a greeny lefty, I do not want low-rise housing all over greenfield sites, either - and as a greeny I despair of those trying to build housing on flood plain sites, it'll all be under water in 40 years and then where will we be? Thoughtful regeneration of inner city/suburban housing would have been a better use of money than building on flood plains!

I voted Lib Dem all these years and ideologically I could never vote Tory, over my dead body, etc, so I expect I'll vote Green at the next election. What a waste...unless I move to Brighton. Hey ho...there may yet be time to do that!

Oh, yes, the private finance initiative. Another example of Labour thinking they can outsmart the Tories by showing that they don't mind letting private enterprise get involved in public projects.

The problem is, the business tail wags the political dog. Politicians mainly do what groups of powerful businessmen tell them to, so whatever party you put into power, they will all be right wing. That only gets more true the more we become a "global economy," because the people running the global corporations have less and less reason to moderate their behaviour, because they have less and less connection to particular countries or groups of people, so less and less interest in anything other than maximising profit. Universal suffrage doesn't make much difference, nor does setting up your own political party, because if you get into power, you too will end up doing as you are told, not as you wish. That's why it is still possible for revolutions to occur in technically democratic countries and chaos to ensue.

Rabbitstew - I completely agree with your take on big business and politicians. It's depressing.

Like rabbitstew says, New Labour 1997 on simply weren't very left wing.

From... well, I guess from TB being elected leader, they were terrified of saying/doing anything that might be perceived as socialist and having another Kinnock-esque electoral disaster. I suppose the habit got ingrained.

Oh, and they were very hung up on their media image (linked to this Kinnock Terror) and of course the vast majority of paper sales are of right-wing ones.

PFI.. how is it possible that no-one at any stage took a look at this and said, 'Er, hang on guys, this is clearly going to be a massive disaster'?

I guess people who say those kinds of things don't get very far in politics/civil service.

The answer of course is they were a bunch of self servng todders just like the current lot.

Bitter? Me?

'Self-serving' they may have been but their policy decisions were famously based on focus groups and other measures of public opinion. All they wanted was to win the next election. The conclusion has to be that, once you've taken the group out of the mix that would vote Labour regardless, a return to more traditional left-wing policies were not what the floating public wanted. And I even include the Iraq war in that assessment because, despite the march, it was a popular policy until the bigger story came out.

Which goes to show how stupid the floating public are, I guess.

Was the Iraq war really a popular policy? I always felt it was only popular with Tony Blair and the press (which resolutely refused to question intelligently the farcical claims made about weapons of mass destruction and the likelihood of Saddam Hussein ever having any intention of bombing the UK... ). Or is press opinion now deemed to be public opinion? Or is it thought to be the case (or even actually the case?!) that the public have no opinions, except those given to them by the press? Which would make the nastiness of most newspapers even more concerning than it already is.