Boris Johnson focus on housing dismissed amid economic storm
Boris Johnson will try to reset his beleaguered premiership on Thursday with a speech on housing and the cost of living that was condemned by opponents as “hot air and waffle” and rehashed policies, rather than a genuine attempt to tackle the crises.
As petrol prices saw their biggest daily jump in 17 years and Britain was warned its economy could be hit more by the Ukraine war than any other major country, the prime minister was expected to mainly promise concrete plans in the coming weeks.
Advance extracts of the speech released by Downing Street saw Johnson promise to “use our fiscal firepower” to help struggling households, but contained no specifics beyond broad pledges of cost-saving policies still being prepared.
Reports said that the speech would outline measures to allow people to use benefits to help in securing a mortgage. The Times said he will argue that the £30bn in housing benefit that currently goes towards rent would be better spent in helping people become first-time buyers. However it remained unclear how this would help people on such low incomes with lenders increasingly concerned about affordability criteria amid the cost-of-living crisis.
Another anticipated proposal is the extension of the right-to-buy discount scheme for social tenants to those in housing association properties, an idea first raised in the 2015 Conservative manifesto and condemned as likely to make the housing crisis worse.
Another possibility is a relaunch of another existing housing idea, using cheap-to-build modular, “flat-pack” homes to increase supply. The speech was also set to cite the “ambition” to reform mortgage finance to make first-time house purchases easier.
Billed by No 10 as Johnson reassuring Britons he is “on their side”, the speech in Lancashire caps a political week which saw the prime minister gravely damaged on Monday when 148 of his MPs, more than 40% of the parliamentary party, sought to have him removed in a confidence vote.
In an increasingly bleak economic backdrop to the speech, a litre of petrol rose to an average of 180.73p, on the verge of breaking the £100 barrier for a tank of fuel for a 55-litre family car.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development thinktank, meanwhile, predicted that next year the UK would see zero economic growth, the worst anticipated rate among the G7 group of major industrialised nations.
In his speech, Johnson was to acknowledge what he termed “global headwinds”, but promised a route through the crisis, albeit with minimal immediate specifics.
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