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.

Mind you, if the majority of the press only choose to investigate sex and gluttony and just report the propaganda they are told about everything else, I guess it's quite hard to form an educated opinion, albeit it's possible to develop a good radar for propaganda.

Rather insulting to call the public 'stupid' just because their views are right of centre. Save your scorn for an allegedly left-wing party that abandons its principles to appeal to those people.

On the war in Iraq maybe 'popular' isn't the right word but the 50/50 for/against poll position going into the vote by March 19 didn't mean it was resoundingly unpopular either. According to MORI, within a few days of the war starting, UK opinion polls showed a massive swing in favour of British involvement. Andrew Gilligan's 'sexed up dossier' statement wasn't until May 2003, Kelly died in July that year and I think that's when the suspicions and allegations started to gather speed.

Ok, I am by no means a Tory suoporter. In principal leftie, but v dissapointed by New Labour government. However, going back to the OP about social housing, planning policy was changed underground Blair to requirent an increased proportion of affordable housing in new housing stock. I know this is not the same as social housing, and don't get me on the affordability of affordable housing....

Sorry for typos, baby in one arm and fat fingers...

I'm not for one moment suggesting anyone right of centre is stupid. I'm quite certain that some of my opinions would be considered right of centre. However, if you are claiming that Labour made decisions on the basis of what the floating public said they wanted in focus groups and the floating public now think Labour made silly decisions during its time in power, then I don't see how you can escape the conclusion that it was the floating public that was making the silly decisions, rather than the Labour government. The Labour government under that analysis was just doing as it was told. Or do you mean that the focus groups just stated that they wanted the Labour government to make any old decisions which were right of centre and trusted Labour to make the correct right-of-centre decisions? In which case, they really shouldn't have voted for a party that was supposed to be left wing, since most people vote for the stereotypes of the parties, not the reality.

Suspicions and allegations about the War should have gathered speed much faster and earlier, that's my point. It's not as if they didn't in other parts of the world - just not in the British press.

Labour encouraged house price sto spiral oit of control. We woudk not need social housing if hosue sprices had not risen far faster than average wages.

Before he died, Eddie George (the former Bank of England Governor) revealed to the Treasury Select Committee in 2007 that when the BoE dropped interest rates in the early 2000s they knew it would stoke house prices. We are still living with the consequences. This was done in conjunction with the removal of house prices from the inflation target by the then Labour Govt. Ever rising house prices were a way of encouraging the feel good factor that led to 14 yrs of Labour Govt.

The fact that young people and working families on low income cannot afford a home is entirely down to this policy.

"BANK CHIEFS BEHIND BOOM SAYS EDDIE

Bank of England chiefs deliberately stoked up a consumer boom they knew would boost house prices and personal debt in order to stave off recession, former governor Eddie George admitted yesterday.
Lord George, who used to be Britain's most powerful banker, said the boom he helped create was not sustainable - but insisted that he 'did not have a choice'.
The man known as 'Steady Eddie' told MPs the decision had been made as the only option to stop Britain sliding into a recession. His admission comes in the wake of figures that show the average house price has reached an all-time record of over £200,000.
Lord George said: 'We knew that we were having to stimulate consumer spending. We knew we had pushed it to levels which couldn't be sustained in the medium and long-term.
'We were very conscious that that could give rise to problems in the future. But, for the time being, if we had not done that, then the UK economy would have gone into recession just as has the US.'
With personal debt now standing at £1.3trillion, Lord George said the precarious situation would be known as his 'legacy'.
Interest rates were cut as low as 3.75% during Lord George's decade-long reign. He became head of the Bank of England in 1993. Lord George was replaced in June 2003 by the current governor Mervyn King.

Because the councils enjoyed the income from the sale of council houses, but were able to blame the Tory 'right to buy' policy for the resulting shortage of those same council houses?

Under the 'right to buy' scheme, who bought the flats/houses? Was it a) council tenants who would not have given up their tenencies in a year of Sundays or b) Margaret thatcher's lizard people?

Would all these sold places actually be in circulation or would they just be with the er... Same families they were sold to?

Ah, you see, Labour and the Bank of England encouraging a house price boom was just doing what focus groups wanted. The majority wanted their house to keep going up and up in value, so they were given what they wanted. And those who thought this was an appalling idea had to watch while the media went on and on about it, encouraging people to think this was a great way of making money and not to worry about the consequences, because if you were very cunning, the consequences would be someone else's.

And all the encouragement of personal gain by any means, regardless of the social use of your money making project, suited banks and big businesses perfectly, because it meant their apparent philosophy of profit by any means and huge awards for huge risks would be considered acceptable. And we are still encouraged to do anything to make money even now - because no-one can think of a quick way of getting this country into a position where it makes anything useful, and any money is better than no money. So, we all have to rely on getting useful things from elsewhere (including most of our food) whilst we are supposed to come up with great and profitable apps and internet ventures selling crap from elsewhere that nobody ought to want, because other people have made huge fortunes that way, so it must be The Thing To Do now that we can't sell houses for a profit. And we still have our banking industry, which will stay here if we agree to carry on with our philosophy that profit by any means is good, but not if we ask it to rein back on some of its worst excesses... (which is a shame, because a banking industry that behaves with moderation would be most useful). Because making useful stuff is not profitable enough and is too difficult to set up. And we all still want to believe that our current lifestyles are sustainable - which again suits big businesses, because it gives the people running them a bit longer to make sure that when the sh*t really does hit the fan, they've feathered their own nests sufficiently (ie sustained their lifestyles) to weather the storm and move on out to wherever in the world ends up with all the cash (taking the risk that there is anywhere nice and stable left to live).

Or something like that.

Just been reading an article that summed it up nicely.

We no longer have Democracies in Europe we have BANKOCRACIES.

Because they are incompetent?

Because the democracies are incompetent, the bankocracies are incompetent, or the banks are incompetent? Or because everyone is incompetent?

I think Rasidan is answering the OP and means that Labour is incompetent.

Rasidan has a way of cutting to the chase and succintly summing up a debate. She tends to use Occam's Razor and there is no arguing with that sort of logic.

Ooh. I like that. Occam's Razor. I shall try to get that into a conversation some time.

'Because they are incompetent?'

Those 4 words are supreme. There is nothing extraneous and they are even asked as a rhetorical question in the style of the best political philosophers.
Superb.

Welcome to the politics board, Rasidan. We need more quality contributions like this. It is alos noteworthy that Rasidan appears to be of the right rather than the left, as evidenced by the cutting sarcasm of the submission.

In fact, from the clarity of Rasidan's insight and without wishing to be presumptious, I would hazard a guess that Rasidan is a fellow Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday reader

presumptuous
damn auto-correct on the Ipad

On the war in Iraq maybe 'popular' isn't the right word but the 50/50 for/against poll position going into the vote by March 19 didn't mean it was resoundingly unpopular either. According to MORI, within a few days of the war starting, UK opinion polls showed a massive swing in favour of British involvement. Andrew Gilligan's 'sexed up dossier' statement wasn't until May 2003, Kelly died in July that year and I think that's when the suspicions and allegations started to gather speed.

Before the war started, the public were overwhelmingly against it. Opinion polls consistently showed a large majority against the war unless two conditions were met: UN resolution authorising war and weapons inspectors finding WMDs. Neither of these two conditions were met:

www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/831/War-With-Iraq-8212-The-Ides-Of-March-Poll.aspx

It is only once the war started that the public 'rallied behind the troops'. They knew it was a load of crap, but thought it was important to support the troops once the war started.