Speaking at the Deal Catalyst’s Annual Investor’s Conference on UK Mortgage Finance yesterday, Professor of Politics and International Relations Matthew Goodwin, said that in focus groups of voters housing was “not a top three issue”.
He noted that voter priorities included the economy and the cost of living crisis, the National Health Service and immigration.
However, Goodwin said that policy around housing and mortgages would be “important into he next election” but only in the context of the cost of living crisis.
He continued: “I think there are two things going on right now that are interesting. One is Labour have been pulling back on some of their positioning around things like rent controls. They’ve not really tried to make housing as much of an issue as perhaps you might have expected them to do.
“That is irritating the left of the Labour Party, so the more Corbynista/Momentum members want the Labour party to go much further in helping renters in a pushing back against Conservatives.”
Goodwin said that on the flip side, the Conservatives have struggled to meet their pledge on housebuilding and to “come up with a big bold offer” for what they want to do on housing in the next general election.
He noted that students that he teaches, who were born in 2005, housing was a top issue, however, he said that compared to baby boomers they were less likely to vote.
“It’s not really in their [Conservative] interest to turn the volume up in a major way on this [housing] issue,” Goodwin added.
Pressures on the next government
However, he said that there were “pressures on housing” that would make it a more prominent issue for the next government.
Goodwin quoted a report from the Centre of Policy Studies which found that it was that the UK was building between 270,000 to 280,000 houses a year, which is “not beating” the 300,000 target per year set by the Conservatives.
“Now, if you were to look at what we’re going to need to build every year, it’s going to be somewhere around 620,000 to 630,000, especially to accommodate high levels of migration which have accompanied the post-Brexit environment. We’re not even coming close at the moment with this issue,” he said.
Goodwin said that this was compounded by rising rents and the fall in social housing.
He noted that Labour had said that they wanted to do more on social housing as “they want to build as much as possible and they want it [social housing] to become much more popular for accommodation. So, I think housing is going to become a bigger and bigger political issue,” he concluded.
