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Housing is another reason why roof’s falling in on Brown
TYPICALLY, it was Vince Cable who made the most telling intervention during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons yesterday (Wednesday) when he challenged Gordon Brown’s economic policy.
Mr Cable, who should be the leader of the Lib-Dems as well as in government, possesses the sharpest mind on economics among parliamentarians.
He pointed out that the building industry was in a most serious crisis, thousands of workers being laid off and building companies in trouble with banks.
He suggested that a possible way out was for the government to allow local authorities to “acquire” properties to help nearly two million families on the nation’s housing waiting lists.
Here in Camden the homeless queue extends to 15,000 families.
Brown’s deputy, Harriett Harman, side-stepped Mr Cable’s question.
Mr Cable could have gone one step further – he could have cogently argued that Britain’s economic crisis could be tackled through the application of Keynesian policies.
Generous public expenditure helped to drag the United States out of its depression in the 1930s.
The continuation of Keynes’ solution to capitalism’s cyclical problems boosted Britain’s mixed economy in the 1950s and 1960s.
Keynes was ignored by Mrs Thatcher and later by Gordon Brown.
The PM promised more than a year ago that the construction industry would be able to build three million homes in the next few years, and that this was the way forward. This has been proved to be as hollow as his constant pledges to the Commons that there would be no more boom or bust.
The housing industry is indeed nearly bust. There is no possibility that it will provide three million homes.
Tens of thousands of new homes are now on the market – and in the face of the credit crunch cannot be sold.
Can local authorities – funded by the government – build their way out of the crisis? Yes, says Alan Walter, a local housing campaigner, who is spearheading a body called Defend Council Housing.
It has won growing support among Labour MPs, and nods of agreement from some Lib-Dem MPs.
Brown remains stubbornly recalcitrant enamoured of the belief that only the private market can be supported.
Eventually, he adopted Mr Cable’s advice last year that Northern Rock should be nationalised.
Will he listen to him now?
If Labour loses the coming Glasgow by-election, perhaps he will.
His options are narrowing.
If he switches course, perhaps Camden Council – through private developers – will start building homes again.
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