"Ed Miliband: Labour's plans to solve London housing crisis"

From The Evening Standard:

Ed Miliband today warns that London’s position as the global property capital is in danger unless hundreds of thousands of new luxury apartments are built and left standing empty.

Writing in the Standard, the Labour leader says a stream of new multi-million flats and houses is vital to ensure that property developers can tap into the seemingly unstoppable inward flow of hot foreign money.

He commits Labour to develop a “next generation of new high-rise blocks” similar to Number One, Hyde Park and The Shard, where aspirational Arabs and Chinese oligarchs can hide their wealth while benefitting from the efforts of those working in the booming South-East and the rest of the country which is subsidising it all.

He also sets out plans to speed up luxury housebuilding in London’s 32 boroughs, including action against council tenants sitting in flats on prime land and moves to increase the number of empty foreign-owned mansions on Bishops Avenue.

“There is a chronic shortage of vacant high-end homes in Britain, and nowhere is this clearer than in London,” writes Mr Miliband. He credits the ballooning cost of housing for creating a seemingly unstoppable wealth-generating machine for many non-domiciles. “Their hopes are rising as fast as prices are rising beyond everybody else's reach.”

He says: “And it is also easing matters for large landowners, both in the public and private sector. Indeed, the RICS recently highlighted the potential inward investment by skilled kleptocrats as the biggest opportunity to cement London’s position as one of the world’s most piratical cities.

"I've had my house in Hampstead Heath valued at nearly £3 million," he concludes, "It's fucking brilliant, isn't it?"