Unpleasant

Your host is not, in the great scheme of things, poor.

I can, however, only dream of being able to pay £2,800 a month for a flat.

Alas, it is not only Boris who is pushing 'affordable' housing ("affordable" meaning, in general, 80% of market price - reduced to a still astronomical 60% in the Mount Pleasant case). The term is all over Labour policy documents, in London and nationally. A modest proposal for you to ponder over the weekend: let's stop talking about 'affordable' housing and start talking about social, or even better council housing, which is increasingly the only sort of housing that any normal person can actually afford.

That London

Nurtured in the bosom of that most talked about of fictional entities, the white working class, away from large urban centres, I have spent my entire adult life in London. I therefore straddle the electoral divide of the moment, in the eyes of the commentariat, that between London and, um, absolutely everywhere else in England.

London, which is "educated and civilised", doesn't vote for UKIPers and returns Labour councils. Everywhere else is brimful of racist yokels who hang on Nigel Farage's every word, have abandoned classical political allegiances, and who would no doubt be described using the phrase "sea-change" if journalists hadn't stopped using the phrase "sea-change" about a decade ago.

Now, don't get me wrong, against the Pollyannaish line being pushed by the liberal-left, the UKIP results yesterday are significant. As I said. But the whole "it's a crazy world outside London" explanation of Farageism is less than adequate. For reasons including, but not limited to, the following:

• The rush to paint London as some kind of leftist paradise that inevitably keeps its head whilst the rest of the country wraps itself in the union jack has to reckon with the fact that Boris Johnson twice beat Ken Livingstone in a straight contest.
• It is pretty much to be expected the Labour will do proportionately better in (a) large urban centres, and (b) places with significant minority ethnic populations. Thus, not just the results in London, but also in Manchester and Liverpool.
• It is absolutely true that there is disillusionment with Labour, and a widespread sense of abandonment amongst its traditional working class base. The factors giving rise to this are equally present in London. The difference in London is that there are counteracting forces preventing a peel-off to UKIP or apathy: notably more radical Labour programmes in key boroughs (Camden, Islington), strong left/ green alternatives and/ or community groups to absorb dissent in places where Labour are shit (Newham/ Lewisham). None of these things are entirely unique to London.

There remains a serious crisis of working class representation in England, and the rest of the UK. It is compounded by an immediate housing crisis and an economic 'recovery' that is having zero impact on peoples' actual well-being. These are the issues Labour needs to address; sidelining the persisting reality of class in favour of a supposed fissure between London and the provinces is the kind of politics that belongs in Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch. It has nothing to offer.

Friday Video Corner

Dear as houses

Pete Firmin has a good piece on housing in the latest Labour Briefing. One paragraph in particular hits home about a very live issue in London,

Even when housing is built by local authorities (still a scarcity) or planning permission granted for housing associations or private builders, it is more expensive than it need be. There is much debate around terms like "affordable housing/ rents" and "social rents". The irony is that "affordable" means around 80% of market prices. So even when local authorities insist that developers include "affordable" housing in their schemes - something that happens less and less often - it is far from affordable. Much housing being built in London is built specifically with foreign investors in mind, some being advertised in Singapore before London!

On that last point, the trend towards properties functioning as global speculative investments rather than anything as crudely passe as homes has been helped along by London's own mayor.

That there is a housing crisis in Britain, and especially in London, is widely recognised. As Pete points out though, there is a high level of general political uselessness in proposing solutions. This is an area on which the Left needs to focus attention. Developing joined-up thinking on housing will require analysis, requiring an understanding of how land prices, the low potential for efficiency gains in the housing industry, a culture of home ownership (in turn tied up increasingly with the demonisation of socially housed people), government support for house purchases, and the global exposure of the British housing market give rise to a situation where, on the one hand, ordinary people cannot afford to live in urban centres and, on the other, the effect of the bubble-prone housing market is disastrous, with much of the much-trumpeted current growth being the fictitious creature of housing demand.

This analysis, and policy arising out of it, is a job of work. But, with an eye cast towards this year's local elections and next year's general election, if you want two popular and effective policies that are a vast improvement on the present bi-partisan alliance with property developers and the 'regeneration' agenda, here's two: rent control and council housing building. Now, come on Ed, you've been asked to think boldly.