Forget Thatcher – Theresa May's social housing pledge is true Conservatism

In the last eight years, the Government has had eight housing ministers. For some time the position – that at one point in recent history came second only to those in charge of defence – has been seen as irrelevant.

David Cameron hated discussing the spectre of the housing crisis. The attitude of modern Tory views was exemplified by Nick Clegg in his memoirs of government, claiming that during one meeting of the Coalition’s "Quad" either Cameron or George Osborne complained: “I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters.”

It appeared this week, however, that the spectre may have suffered its first blow in a long-needed exorcism.

In a speech hailed by the National Housing Federation as a “total step change,” Theresa May announced that she would be investing £2 billion to fund long-term development of social housing for the country’s poorest. Britain must, Mrs May said, stop looking down on those in social housing as “second-rate citizens.” It seemed that for the first time since 2010, a Conservative Prime Minister was finally paying attention to housing.

It didn’t take long for the move to be criticised by the Conservative Party’s Thatcherites and other free marketeers. They quickly decried government intervention in the housing market and instead called for relaxed regulations.

It was not even conservative, some claimed, with George Eaton of the New Statesmanpointing to the announcement as an example of British politics sliding inexorably leftwards.

The problem is, in fact, it’s the total opposite.

May’s hope to provide security and housing for society’s worst off is at its heart a deeply traditional Tory principle. “Paternal socialism”, embodied by Tory leaders from Disraeli through to Harold Macmillan, defined the Conservative party for a century.

It's demise only came with the rise of Margaret Thatcher, and her callous ambition to shrink the state to microscopic levels. Her legacy lived on in Cameron, Osborne, and other politicians of their generation who idolised Thatcher to an extent that was almost religious.

Younger members of the party don’t think much of the Thatcherite gospel.

Elected in 2015, Tom Tugendhat even referenced Disraeli’s much copied and lauded “One Nation” principles in a recent interview with The Spectator as what he thought his generation saw as the bedrock of their beliefs – a view that even a decade ago would have seen its backers decried as “wets” by those in charge of the party.

For MPs like Tugendhadt, along with a large number of Britain’s population, Europe is not the most important issue facing the UK.

Brexit is for them a frustration, but also merely an obstacle with the country’s real problems hiding behind it. The past decade has seen the institutions of state crumble away, ton an extent that Thatcher could only have dreamed of. Their fall has left vast swathes of the UK’s population with nowhere to turn, no one to help them, and most importantly: nowhere to live.

It won’t be long before Article 50 and Irish backstops are distant memories. In their place, the country’s politicians will be forced to grapple with much more pressing concerns.

Central government has tightened the belt of its local authorities with almost glee – funding in real terms is down by almost half since David Cameron took office in 2010. As a result, programmes designed to help those worst off have suffered.

Meanwhile, the few remaining public institutions left in Britain have been victim of privatisation or partnerships with outsourcing companies. And it is hard to find a time in the last century where housing has seen such little attention and investment from Whitehall.

But the Conservative Party has not always been like this. The idea of encouraging a Britain of austerity would have been anathema to most of the party’s previous leaders.

Disraeli and his successors believed that industrialised Britain was divided into two nations: The Rich, and The Poor. To unite the two was the One Nation dream, achieved by the former having a duty for the latter rather than hoping to merely increase their own wealth. It was a principle that remained constant in the party from the 1890s – with some deviation – until the 1970s.

A key principle that arose as One Nation beliefs evolved was to ensure that every person in Britain had a home, uniting the two nations of those who did and those who didn’t. It was this that spurred the likes of Neville Chamberlain and later Harold Macmillan to build more houses through the actions of government than anyone since.

Future leaders failed to follow their example, and much of their good work was sold off by Thatcher in an ill-conceived and ill-thought out policy that saw social housing across the country sold with nothing to replace the flogged-off stock.

Mrs May’s cash injection is a good first step to returning to a true Conservative Party, but £2 billion is not nearly enough. Until she sanctions a much larger programme – building more houses and sooner – the two nations will remain, growing further and further apart.

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