Opposing reforms that are a step in the right direction is bad politics
What do you do as a parliamentary opposition when the Government is doing something you know you should support?
The Conservative Party has faced this issue twice this week. The first is on Labour's feeble attempt to slow the increase (not make a cut) in health-related welfare spending. How that will play out is unresolved as I write. Kemi Badenoch recognises the reputational risks of voting against, so she has made an offer to back Sir Keir Starmer – but on conditions: further spending cuts and no tax increases this autumn.
It's clever tactically. Starmer clearly can't accept the conditions. And his refusal allows a vote against the Government and, potentially, the death of a flagship Bill. That's the job of an opposition, isn't it?
Well maybe. Yes, it certainly makes things awkward for Starmer. But it makes things awkward for the Tories too.
For a political party, principles are as important as tactics, especially perhaps if you are trying to reinvent yourselves in the public mind after the political mush of the last 14 years. Sometimes it's possible to be too tactical, too clever.
The fact is the welfare bill has to come down. Maybe Labour is not going about it exactly as we would. But it is still the right thing to do. Fiscal responsibility is supposed to be a Conservative thing. So when Labour is taking a Conservative approach to something, maybe the party should back them?
A similar problem is presented by the Planning Bill, which had its Second Reading in the Lords this week. Less is at stake in the short run, for the Bill will certainly go through. But the underlying politics are if anything more significant.
Labour's Bill is certainly imperfect. It is best characterised as driving the current system to work better: more meaningful plans, less power for local councillors to block, less scope for legal challenge. It has a novel approach to nature protection: essentially making developers pay to restore nature somewhere, but not necessarily on the exact spot where development is taking place.
My suspicion is that this is not going to deliver the boost Labour wants. The current system hasn't delivered the target of 300,000 homes a year since the late 1970s. Indeed, since the financial crash, it's only once delivered more than 200,000. Our restrictive controls-based system, with its presumption against building, very likely just can't do it, however streamlined it is.
Moreover, although Labour hates it when you mention it, any house building is to a very large extent building for migration. Net immigration is going to be, best case, towards two million under this Government, so at least 125,000 homes every year will be needed simply to accommodate future arrivals. While that's the case, it's going to be very difficult to get political consent to build more – and rightly so.
So what is the right political response to this situation? Do Conservatives resist Labour's Bill, arguing that it undermines local democracy and risks the countryside, or support, recognising their approach is imperfect?
At the moment the party is doing neither. Instead it is trying to side-step the choice by saying it wants 'more homes, but the right homes, in the right places'. That allows it to sound sympathetic to the policy aims while raising all sorts of difficulties in practice, and (not by chance) to accommodate very different perspectives within the party.
But there are risks here: not just that Conservatives get on the wrong side of the argument, but that voters can't see the guiding principle that's being applied, perhaps can't even tell whether we are actually supportive or hostile at all. Once again: when trying to establish a clear profile, maybe this is less than ideal.
I know where I stand. Like it or not, and unless you are prepared to engage in what is euphemistically called compulsory 'remigration', which I am not, the population is what it is, and we need to build more houses. That requires both reducing immigration right down to zero for a prolonged period and a serious reform to the current planning system, more like the radical Robert Jenrick proposals from 2021, sadly junked as the Conservative Party entered the early stages of its nervous breakdown. Indeed we might need to be even more radical than that in places like London within the M25.
That's obviously not going to happen under Labour, but it is what a post-2029 government on the Right should aim to do. So we shouldn't do things which are inconsistent with it now.
Labour's Bill is an imperfect half measure, but it still goes in the right direction. There is no future for the Right in echoing the voice of nimby councillors and the green and Lib Dem blob, determined as they are to stop development or hamstring it with green regulation.
The appeal of the Right must instead be to aspiration, to those who want to own a home (and dare I say it more than one?) and get on in life. The Conservative Party at least can't get back in the game without this. Now would be a good time to start.
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