The housing ladder, 1950-2005
A redundant metaphor is blinding British policymakers to big changes
Politicians share with estate agents a tendency to stretch the truth and skate over unpleasant details. The resemblance extends to home ownership itself, where one of the animating ideas of housing policy is more fiction than truth. Ask a politician from any major party about property and the words “housing ladder” will soon crop up. Both Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, and Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, are keen to tell voters how they will help young people get onto its first rung.
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The housing ladder, 1950-2005 ”
Britain January 13th 2024
- The housing ladder, 1950-2005
- A typically British way to smooth handovers of power
- Britain’s worst miscarriage of justice sparks outrage at last
- Britain’s health-care system looks rather as it did in the 1930s
- Wales wants to be more like Scandinavia
- Counting Britain’s beauties and leech-bleeders
- Keir Starmer, Reform UK and Britain’s populist paradox
From the January 13th 2024 edition
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