The Ghost of Clem
Might the Labour Party finally be ready to atone for their original sin?
“I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t. We who either defeated or rescued half Europe, who kept half Europe free, when otherwise it would be in chains.”
Margaret Thatcher, 27 April 1979
Britain once ruled the waves. Within living memory the term ‘superpower’ was coined to refer to the big three: Britain, America, and the Soviet Union. This world order, however, was never to last. While the loss of superpower status was inevitable, just how far post war Britain would fall was not.
By the early 1940s it was clear that the UK was always going to pass the baton. After more than a century of British hegemony across the world, the war had sufficiently weakened Britain and her empire to ensure a different status for the country and, crucially, the mythology that surrounded it. The fall of Singapore in 1942 broke the spell of a Britain that could protect her empire.
Yet this geopolitical reality abroad needn’t have put Britain on the steep path to decline it followed at home for the following forty years. It needn’t have reduced Britain to such a quivering shadow of her former self.
Instead of embracing the realities (and justice) of a newly decolonised world as a dynamic and modern market economy, Britain turned inwards and regulated herself into poverty.
Indeed the failure of post war British economic policy was such that West Germany, the country defeated in war by Britain and her allies, outpaced British growth through the entire post war consensus era. While the UK opted for nationalisation and state control, the Germans opted for a social market economy influenced by the Freiburg school of ordoliberalism: emphasising the importance of fair competition within a market economy - limiting the role of state intervention to that of establishing a social safety net and preventing monopolies.
West Germany saw far less state control than the UK’s interventionist Attlee consensus, and grew much faster.
It is worth taking a moment to think about this. West Germany, with many of its cities reduced to rubble, bounced back from the war faster than the victorious United Kingdom. This, despite the Germans receiving less than half the amount of Marshall Plan funding compared to the amount received by the UK ($3.2bn to $1.5bn) and despite effective reparations being paid to the victors of the war in the form of German intellectual property.
The disastrous post war Attlee government ensured that Britain’s decline from its status as a global superpower to a mid ranking power was faster, deeper, and more painful than it had to be. On almost every front, rot set in:
Across our newly nationalised industries, from coal and steel to road haulage, telecommunications to Thomas Cook, all freshly insulated from the innovative incentive of domestic competition. One by one they fell behind the rest of the world.
Empowered trade unions saw ‘sympathy strikes’ reintroduced, and the power of trade union barons swell to the point that their industrial action could bring down elected governments.
Direct taxation increased even beyond the aberrationally high wartime rates, seeing investment and productivity fall behind over time.
In healthcare, instead of delivering the Conservatives’ tax funded and universal Willink plan for A National Health Service, Attlee’s government stripped out Willink’s market elements, delivering a far more centralised top down state controlled service.
And after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, housebuilding rates halved compared to their pre-war average.
In the seventy odd years since Attlee left office, this country has been slowly unpicking the damage he did. Piece by piece.
We no longer have to humbly apply to the government in order to purchase a telephone, and the sclerotic days of slowly strangled state owned companies are mostly behind us. Trade union barons can no longer hold the entire country to ransom in the way that they once did, and strikes are now far more democratic than they once were. Direct taxation is much lower, too (although admittedly the overall tax burden is heading in a profoundly concerning direction). Even the NHS was greatly improved from a very low base by John Major and Tony Blair with the introduction and expansion of its internal market.
The one area of domestic growth destroying policy that has remained functionally untouched since Clem The Butcher did his best to destroy Britain, is planning.
The ‘nationalisation’ of the right to develop land through the Town and Country Planning Act has led to an absurd, arbitrary, and antiquated system by which we must humbly petition politicians for the right to build on our own land. And these politicians are not deciding based upon clear predictable rules as in other countries. No, in Britain the right to develop is utterly arbitrary. Politicians have total discretion as to whether or not they can block development. And block they do.
Instead of a rules based zoning system - one that protects areas that are particularly precious while designating areas that are less so as able to be developed in accordance with rules (crucially a system which can be understood and navigated by small house builders not just the biggest richest best connected firms) - instead of any kind of sensible outcome like that, we have arbitrarily restrictive socialist chaos.
Because there are no rules to follow in order to guarantee the right to build, not only are prices higher than they ought to be, but developers infuriatingly bank land that has been lucky enough to attain planning permission, just so they can ensure a pipeline of work and a viable business. This would not be an issue if developers could have the certainty of being allowed to build in a rules based zoned market.
Yet bizarrely, today, among the parties seemingly most fervently determined to defend this putrid socialist legacy is Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party.
Along with the often even more fervent Greens and the Lib Dems, of course.
Despite repeated attempts to reform the planning system under Cameron, Johnson, and Truss, today’s Conservative Party appears to have simply given up. It appears to have concluded of the planning socialists and their fellow travellers; ‘if you can’t beat them, join them.’ This is the hallmark of a government that is running out of road. That has lost the energy to fight. That cannot bring itself to slay the dragon.
Margaret Thatcher defined her premiership by dragon slaying. She took on the union barons and won. She took on the vested interests of nationalised Britain, and won. She, alongside Ronald Reagan, took on the entire Communist world, and won.
Even Tony Blair slew what he perceived as dragons in his pursuit of a ruthless mission of modernisation, from sweeping constitutional reform (for better or worse) to the introduction of academy schools, Public-Private Partnerships, and market provision within the NHS.
Boris Johnson had the chance to slay big dragons too. Not just by delivering Brexit and leading the world on Ukraine, but through his potentially transformational post-covid growth project. Boris the Builder used the word ‘build’ thirty two times in his landmark economic speech on how to return to growth after covid.
It’s a speech that now sounds closer to something that might come out of the mouth of the leader of the Labour Party. Or at least the Shadow Chancellor. Boris Johnson spoke about how rules-based European planning systems get more built, and how planning reform was the key to both economic growth and net zero.
‘Why are we so slow at building homes by comparison with other European countries? In 2018 we built 2.25 homes per 1000 people. Germany managed 3.6, the Netherlands 3.8, France 6.8.
I tell you why - because time is money, and the newt-counting delays in our system are a massive drag on the productivity and the prosperity of this country and so we will build better and build greener but we will also build faster.”
He was right. But he bottled it. Instead of taking the chance to become a great reformer, instead of actually using his historic Commons majority, instead of being willing to take on vested interests and expend political capital, he cowardly fired his great crusader for a more rational system of planning, Robert Jenrick, and tried to pretend the entire Planning For The Future white paper never happened.
He bent to the cursed nimby1 will of Caroline Lucas.
And with decisions like that, Boris threw away his chance to be considered a Great Prime Minister.
Not content with simply refusing to improve things, upon becoming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is actively making things worse. He is being more cowardly still. Not only have we seen the removal of housing targets, due to slash homebuilding by 20-40%, but we are seeing further restrictions set in too. In recent weeks Sunak has decided to lean in to his irrational decision to restrict ‘green spaces’ from being built on, even if they are next door to railway stations, or even if they are not so green after all.
The Prime Minister has been leaning in to this bad call. On 18 May he declared:
“I was very clear over the summer, I wanted to make sure our green spaces are protected. I think that is what local communities want.”
Given that 5.9% of the UK is built on, that’s an awful lot of protection Rishi Sunak is setting himself up for. An awful lot of growth he is so keen to prevent.
And on 14 June, Sunak dug in further still. He dug in to defend our 75 year old arbitrary state restrictions on construction - instigated by Attlee. The system that allows those with land and wealth to pull up the drawbridge to others, prevent development and hobble the next generation’s chances of accruing property in the way that they themselves enjoyed. The Prime Minister arrogantly said:
“I make absolutely no apology for respecting, respecting what local communities want in their local areas. Whilst the party opposite may want to ride roughshod over the views of local communities and impose top down hor… errr… housing targets, and carpet over the green belt, that is not something that this government will do.”
We are through the looking glass now. The Tory Party is gearing itself up to defend what is arguably the last remaining element of the the growth destroying legacy of the socialists. While Sir Keir Starmer is now admirably setting out his case for dismantling the last element of his party’s post war legacy, Rishi Sunak is leaning in to becoming Mr. Nimby.
What a turnaround. The party responsible for the mess of our planning system is gearing up to undo its own damage. Meanwhile the supposed party of free markets is digging in2 to defend the growth destroying legacy of a socialist.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Stuttering Sunak has been thrust into the limelight with very little experience under his belt. He was extraordinarily lucky to become Chancellor after just five minutes in Cabinet, following Dominic Cummings’ torpedoing of the short lived Boris-Saj Downing Street. Whilst he was undoubtedly skilled in delivering the impressive furlough programme, his moronic decision to deploy (and inexcusably still defend) the pretend-the-pandemic-is-over, inflationary, wasteful, indoor, and highly infectious Eat Out To Help Out scheme deserves just as much condemnation as the idea that the infected should drink bleach.
And now the Prime Minister appears to have decided to throw his lot in with the anti-growth coalition. To proudly take up arms as a key commander alongside Theresa Villiers and Caroline Lucas. Just as the public are starting to turn on this issue.
The sands are shifting. And faster than many had thought.
Not only does the Prime Minister have the speaking style of a children’s television presenter, he has all the political nous of a politician who wears Prada shoes to a building site. Sir Keir is not entirely wrong when he points out Rishi Sunak lost to Liz Truss, who in turn lost to a lettuce.3
Now, I am always amongst the first to say that “Britain and Twitter are not the same thing”, but indulge me for a second as I uncharacteristically say that in this instance Twitter might actually indicate something useful.
In the same way that small groups of motivated people can shift the dial on everything from the reformation to the referendum, influencers can matter. And not just in terms of making you buy Molly-Mae’s latest fake tan in a can.
As Burke noted in ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, loud and organised voices can have outsized influence, even overturn an established order, despite being so often outnumbered by the less motivated.
"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field."
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
As with the motivated passions of the Jacobins, so far motivated passion has been the secret to nimby success. But we are beginning to see a counter-movement. Perhaps some of those great cattle - those who hitherto have stood by silently as noisy nimbys campaign against growth in their local areas - perhaps some are starting to stir.
Now whenever a politician boasts of blocking new housing on social media, they can be sure to be in receipt of a torrent of replies - highlighting their out of touch arrogance and often sheer hypocrisy.
Whether it’s calling out Labour’s Rupa Huq complaining about housing costs, high rent costs, and overcrowding, only to then literally delight in the news that new housing had been blocked in her constituency.
Or the Lib Dem’s Layla Moran who campaigned against any development at all in some towns in her constituency, only to then bravely speak out in Parliament about how difficult it is for Ukrainian refugees to find a house.
Or Conservative Tobias Ellwood who proudly tweeted “Let’s not build any more flats on our public car parks!” In the midst of a severe housing shortage.
There is a growing movement of people more willing to call out these anti-growth politicians.
Of course the small proportion of Brits on Twitter is not the same as Britain. Twits, however, do influence Britain. They influence journalists and politicians, and strong political leadership can shift attitudes.
The grasshoppers do not reflect all that goers on in the field, but they do dominate it. And now we are seeing a new tribe of grasshoppers emerge.
The yimbys4 are getting organised. More so than ever before there is a genuine yimby movement. Yimby ideas are being shared amongst the chattering (twittering?) politico class and that does matter. It, for want of a better phrase, trickles down.
And we are, surprisingly, now seeing some political leadership on planning and housing issues. From none other than Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer. This matters too, particularly as Labour’s opponents appear to be self destructing all around them.
It matters when those espousing one idea are winning in other areas. In applying what has been branded the ‘Strong Horse theory’ to Western politics in the wake of the phenomena of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, Sam Bowman has argued:
“Here's what I call the "Strong Horse" theory of politics: most people's actual ideological commitments are quite weak, and politics is rewarding to them because of the feeling of popularity and gratification that comes from beating their tribal enemies.
The feeling of your team winning is fun because it makes you feel popular & successful. When a team wins (a party or a faction within a party), its views become more attractive to others because their victory has revealed that they are more popular & more likely to win in future…
…I think this is how the "Overton Window" shifts, most of the time. I don't think fringe weirdos ranting about X shifts the Window in their direction, the way a lot of people seem to. I think the Window only shifts if they can demonstrate strength through popularity.
So the mechanism I believe in is victory making people change their views to be closer to yours, because they want to hold popular views. This means that winning in politics is almost always the best way of changing people's minds towards your own.
Hard Brexit came onto the agenda after Brexit won. Corbyn properly took over Labour after 2017, and after 2019 he's being washed away. Every other Tory was a Mayite for the six months she was in power before she lost the 2017 election.”
Now let’s skip over the fact that Strong Horse theory was originally coined by Osama Bin Laden5 in the context of Arab politics and violence. What matters is that it appears to shift sands in democratic politics too. As Osama once said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."
Now, thanks to both Osama and Sam, we can understand a little about how people do often take the lead from politicians on key issues.
At the end of last month YouGov tracked a clear swing in favour of local building. And when it comes to housebuilding in general pro-development now leads anti-development by 59% to 30%. It’s hard to argue that this is anything other than a partisan local election effect: the Labour Party has been seen to have done well, and Sir Keir Starmer is talking about building more. Partisan politics and Strong Horse effects are pushing persuadables towards more yimby policy positions.
I don’t want to overstate how much things are changing - nimbyism can never be underestimated. But it does feel like it is getting weaker. The momentum is certainly now with the yimbys.
A couple of months ago I received rapturous applause from the Question Time audience, calling out every political party for blocking energy infrastructure.
Building things can be populist. Especially if you take the chance to hit out at meddling politicians at the same time.
This is something the ahead-in-the-polls Canadian Conservative Party has figured out. James Dickson has beautifully contrasted the excellent Canadian Tory leader with his deplorable British equivalents on this issue. It shows just how much of a trick Rishi Sunak is missing. The Canadian Tories understand how a positive populist line on planning can be powerfully effective.
And we can see other indicators of the shifting mood on the need to build things in British media, specifically the stories being aired in the dead tree press. Recently a fascinating case study in The Times newspaper highlighted ‘Our Planning Nightmare’. It is well worth a read, both in humanising the absurdities of what is so erroneously described as the ‘green’ belt - but also crucially highlighting how the UK’s “complex and contradictory policies” lead to a development lottery, almost impossible to navigate for smaller firms. As the piece highlights:
“Less than 16 per cent of homes are built by small firms or for individual households, compared with more than 60 per cent in Germany, where a zonal system provides certainty.”
The newfound planning reforming zeal of the paper has also dedicated a recent front page splash to how Nimby Natural England is blocking 160,000 houses through maddening nutrient and water neutrality guidelines. The paper writes that the guidelines “which originated from a 2018 European Court of Justice ruling, have blocked 120,000 new homes so far”. They do this by ensuring new homes will not lead to more phosphates and nitrates running into rivers. Despite no such rules existing for far more polluting farmers.6
These stories increasingly breaking into the mainstream helps shift perceptions.
It is not now as easy as it once was to simply say “save our green spaces” and believe that is an unqualified trump card in any debate. Things are becoming more nuanced, yimbys are becoming more organised, and there is some evidence that public attitudes are shifting.
While polling, organisation, and mood music are encouraging, perhaps the most fascinating development in the last two months is the change of heart of the Labour Party. As recently as the summer of 2021, Sir Keir used to campaign against Boris Johnson’s planning reform as “building on your green spaces”.
Now the Labour Party and the Tories have swapped planning reform positions. Just as they have swapped polling performance too.7
Is this newfound political bravery from Sir Keir? Or has the Labour Party realised something more fundamental, and electorally beneficial? Could it be that Labour has found a bit of a magic bullet here? An opportunity to marry a fulfilment of Labour’s yearning for economic credibility amongst business, with a somewhat populist message.
A rare thing indeed.
This form of market populism from the Labour Party turns politics on its head. Sir Keir’s winning planning reform rhetoric finds itself far more comfortably associated with the likes of the IEA than the TUC. If I hadn’t known Sir Keir had spoken about siding with “the builders not the blockers” through the local election campaign, I’d have assumed it originated as a political phrase by Canadian Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, who often talks about government gatekeepers blocking new housing.
So might the Labour Party, having been the ones to have hobbled this country, our infrastructure, and our growth with an albatross of a planning system in the first place, be ready to be the ones to set us free?
As the must-read comprehensive history of the British planning system set out in the most recent Works In Progress magazine illustrates, the adverse effects of the post-war nationalisation of development rights have accumulated over time. Much like all those other components of post war socialism that themselves took time to bite. This has been a slow strangulation.
Nationalised industries took time to degrade and fall behind their competitors.
Union power took time to embed the effects of inflation in the British economy.
And a slower rate of growth compared to West Germany took time to see Britain fall behind its former combatant.
Big Bad Clem hurt this country more times than Brits in the late 40s had unnecessarily rationed dinners. He was so disastrous precisely because he was so successful. And bit by bit, subsequent Prime Ministers have had to hack away at the chains with which he tied down the British Economy.
Might we be approaching a pivotal moment? The next big liberalisation of the British economy from Boa Clemstrictor’s long shadow? And might Rachel Reeves be the woman to do it?
As public attitudes shift and yimby movements gain momentum, might we have reached an inflection point? Might this country be ready for Just Build It populism? And might Labour be finally ready to atone for their original sin?
NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) - those who campaign against development near them. See also BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone).
Or should that be ‘preventing anyone from digging’?
Liz Truss actually lost to the weight of the entire British establishment, knives out in her own party, and a number of key sequencing errors that spooked the market before her ministry could get on to its supply side reform agenda.
YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) - the opposite of nimby.
Classic Sam Bowman.
This anti-farming euro-judges enforced farce should send every Tory MP tonto.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc?
Good job, really interesting discussion 💪👍 & omg omg omg, Rish does look a lot like Mr Nimbus! 😭🤣