We are considerably more Home-Owner-Ist than you.

From The Daily Mail:

The CML said it expects around 48,000 people will be repossessed this year, the highest number of evictions for 14 years.

The Tories slammed the Government's flagship repossession prevention policy, the Mortgage Rescue Scheme, for helping a paltry number of homeowners. Since its launch in January, just 92 families have been helped despite nearly 11,000 approaches by desperate families. Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps said: 'It's time the Government stopped trying to grab quick headlines and actually brought in policies to help vulnerable families across the country.'

LibDem housing spokesman Sarah Teather added: 'Ministers have spent billions of pounds to save the banking system but their efforts to help those facing repossession have been shamefully inadequate. No Government programme has ever been as inappropriately named as the Mortgage Rescue Scheme which helped just 14 families to the end of June. We need to urgently reform mortgage law so that courts have the power to ensure that repossession is only ever a last resort.'

In a further blow, the CML predicts the number will rise even higher next year to 53,000 as homeowners lose the struggle to keep their home...

Now, as we know, Nulabour's economic miracle was based on easy credit and the illusion of wealth created by rising house prices. They've painted themselves into a bit of a corner, as the only way to keep the pyramid scheme going is to bail out banks, cut interest rates and prevent house prices from finding their equilibrium by completely re-writing the rules on repossessions, i.e. make it much more difficult for the banks to turf people out (because the flood of repo's coming onto the market would burst the bubble once and for all).

And to my surprise/annoyance, Nulabour's plans actually seem to be working. Don't forget that back in February 2009, before the new anti-repo rules had really taken effect, the CML were forecasting that there'd be 75,000 repossessions in 2009, up from 40,000 in 2008. So given that economic conditions have worsened, and assuming the CML's original forecast to be reliable, Nulabour have actually prevented, or delayed 27,000 repo's.

Now, a sensible opposition politician would point out that these 27,000 delayed repo's have come at a huge cost - all the savers have seen their returns dwindle to nothing; the taxpayer has had to stump up £170 billion* to bail out the banks; and houses are as unaffordable as ever.

A sensible politician would point out that home-ownership just isn't suitable for everybody, and that a far cheaper way to house people with low or unreliable incomes is to build a shedload of social housing. We could have built three million council houses to house every single family on the waiting lists and had plenty left over for everybody who is ever repossessed or might otherwise need one in the next two decades (which would have also deprived the BNP of a genuine grievance to exploit, natch) and still had change left over from £170 billion. And assuming that the average social rent actually collected is at least £200 a month (a fraction of what it costs for an average mortgage or private rent) it would have been more than self-financing.

So the taxpayer would have saved himself, in the long run, £170 billion. And OK, social tenants don't share in the fool's gold of ever rising house prices, but they have security of tenure, and they can put aside the money they're saving in rent/mortgage payments and build up their own proper nest-egg with real money invested in real things. You takes your money and you takes your choice.

But do the Blue or Yellow Wings of the Home-Owner-Ist Party say this? No of course not, all they can suggest is that Nulabour do even more to cosset reckless borrowers and even more to prop up house prices. Any concept of value-for-taxpayer's-money went out of the window years ago.

Twats, the lot of them.

* IMF estimate of April was £130 billion, plus another £40 billion from a week or two ago.