Vindico* has trotted out the the tired and tested mantra "... the empowering reforms of Thatcher's council house sell-off; the creation of an asset owning society." which set me thinking about 'vote buying'.
As an aside (this not being the main thrust of this post, but worth mentioning) I personally object to the sale of council houses at undervalue;
1. It was (and still is) ruthless vote buying.
2. If the State sells off assets, then it should try to obtain the best price on behalf of the ultimate owner of those assets, i.e. the taxpayer.
3. Obviously, the sale of shares in state-owned monopolies at undervalue to the general public (i.e. the taxpayer) in very small lots is perfectly OK, the winners and losers are the same people. This does not apply to the sale of council houses to individual 'better off poor' households**.
But that is not the main point of this post...
4. Which is ... that is no way to buy votes! The Tories simply made one-off gifts, worth £10,000 or £20,000, to a small strata of council tenants. Once those people have cashed in their capital gains and bought privately, there is no motivation to vote Tory again; the cupboard is bare, the ammunition spent.
5. As ever, Nulab have shown how to do it!. First you create an army of two million 'key workers' on not-particularly-high-salaries; then you engineer a bubble in house prices; then you offer said key workers all manner of gimmicky shared-ownership schemes***, which seem attractive enough on first sight, the hook being, once you sign up you are a tied worker; if a key worker is ever tempted to give up his or her job as, let's say, a Senior Play Ranger then the simple fact that they will simultaneously be forced to move home and sell what little 'shared equity'**** they have to the State's preferred bidder makes the whole procedure (changing jobs and moving home) far too stressful, so they stay put.
6. And they are also captive voters; to keep their homes, they have to keep their jobs, and to keep their jobs they have to keep voting Nulab, as any sensible new government would scrap all these stupid jobs (and there are, as mentioned, at least two million of them). Brilliant! And it's all done with taxpayers' money!*****
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Footnotes:
* With whom I agree on most things, of course.
** If they can afford to buy, they shouldn't be in council housing anyway. It'd be far better and cheaper to increase their rents while simultaneously reducing housing benefit to private tenants - that way, the better off poor would be able to buy up the homes that are no longer profitable for private DSS landlords; and the benefit claimants would move into the newly vacant council housing.
*** And rename them regularly, they are currently called 'Social HomeBuy', 'New Build HomeBuy' and 'Open Market HomeBuy'.
**** And of course, once prices have slumped and our tied workers have negative equity, they will have the added pain of buying themselves out of slavery. Perfect!
***** A tax which falls particularly heavily on property developers, who have to sell a certain fraction of new-builds to the Powers That Be at cost-price for them to pass on to their tied-workers, and on private sector workers who of course are chasing a relatively smaller number of homes for sale. It's a bit like the system of redistribution in Zimbabwe, but much more sophisticated.
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6 comments:
Very true Mark. In respone to your question over at my place on my giving an easy ride to Thatcher, I take a fairly simplistic view of the situation. I agree it was a bit of a mess, was essentially a giveaway to that generation, received little value for the taxpayer etc.
However I see the reforms as more important due to the cultural impact rather than the pure hard numbers. For example, if people own their homes then they will take more pride in them, feel ownership of their neighbourhoods, feel engaged in society, and, crucial at the time, achieved something they never thought they would. Changing the culture and peoples attitude from one of 'can't' to 'can' and from 'asset ownership is not for me' to one of 'i can own and build assets' is very important. People were able to tangibly realise their changing attitues towards ambition.
I agree with you that the share sell offs from privatisation were more equitable. Few things are perfect and done as efficiently as they could be, and council house sell offs were done with some short-term political motivation in mind, but I still think the reform was empowering. Once people move from feeling cut out of society and ignored, to feeling part of it, then jealousy and resentment which may exist starts to melt and people are motivated to improve thei rlot because they have hope that they can. This is very valuable.
That's a fair answer, I agree that home ownership is A Good Thing all-in-all, but I am still to this day far from convinced that this was the best (or cheapest) way of encouraging it.
Fantastic Post Mark.
We've got this post as the first in our new monthly guest link to the best postings in the blogosphere.
Thanks!
To do anything more intelligent with Council Housing, she would probably have needed to nationalise them first.
D, you'll have to explain. What's wrong with just having a rule saying 'Thou shalt not flog off state assets at undervalue', like the rule with which they caught out Dame Shirley Porter?
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