Category: National politics

Today both the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, and my MP Rupa Huq have been talking about housing affordability. Corbyn called in aid an email from a “Matthew” at PMQs at lunchtime. Huq, who remains unembarrassed about nominating Corbyn, has been talking to the Gazette.

Both gloss over Labour’s appalling record on housing. Housing affordability halved under Labour in the period 1998 to 2007 and has stayed about the same since according to the published stats (DCLG Live Table 577). They have probably got a little worse since and then got better more recently.

One of the drivers for this was Labour’s awful record on social housing. As I have pointed out many times before the worst ten years in our country since the Second World War for social housebuilding were 1998 to 2007. It is no coincidence.

Unemployment in the London Borough of Ealing, as measured by the claimant count, has fallen below 5,000 for the first time since June 2008.

Ealing’s unemployment peaked at 9,580 in September 2009 as the post credit crunch recession worked its way through the economy. Since then unemployment overall in Ealing has halved and fell below 5,000 to 4,910 in September. This is the first time Ealing’s claimant count has been below 5,000 since June 2008 when it was 4,950.

If you want to see where the data comes from all you have to do is go to the ONS’s nomis database.

Expect to hear much rejoicing from our three local Labour MPs and the Labour council leader. Or not maybe.

The left wing press is bigging up another of those round robin letters this morning.

• BBC: Migrant crisis: UK response criticised by senior former judges
• The Guardian: Conservatives’ asylum policy on Syria criticised as ‘too low, too slow, too narrow’
• The Huffinton Post: Migration Crisis: 300 Lawyers Pen Letter To David Cameron Blasting Syrian Refugee Response
• Daily Mirror: More than 300 lawyers warn Tories’ ‘inadequate’ response to Syrian refugees is costing lives

Somehow the BBC seems to be unembarrassed and unapologetic about running in this company.

If you do go to the original material and look at the list of signatories it all becomes clear. All the usual lefty suspects such as Geoffrey Bindman, Helena Kennedy and Michael Mansfield are there. Indeed 9 officers of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers are there.

If you are in any doubt about what is going on here then the signatures of 52 lawyers from Doughty Chambers should convince you. They say:

Doughty Street Chambers is probably the largest and most wide-ranging civil liberties legal practice in the world.

There are 43 signatures from Matrix Chambers with their “progressive outlook”. The Blackstone Chambers provides 32 signatories.

Even a cursory look at the list tells you that this letter is about the human rights barrister industry touting for business.

In response to David Cameron’s speech this morning the Labour Party bashed out this press release allegedly penned by Jonathan Ashworth MP, Shadow Minister without Portfolio. Without scruple more like.

I know the housing numbers so his housing claim leaps out as being disingenuous. Well plain mendacious really.

He says:

You can’t claim to care about the housing crisis when you’ve overseen the lowest level of housebuilding in peacetime since the 1920s.

How did that happen? There was a little thing called the credit crunch.

If you want to know what happened to house building in our country in recent years go and look at the DCLG Live tables on house building, in particular Table 212 House building: permanent dwellings started and completed, by tenure, Great Britain (quarterly).

If you go and dig in the data the low point for housing starts in this country was Q4 2008 when only 20,660 homes were started. The record of the Coalition in the period Q3 2010 to Q4 2014 (latest data) is an average of 34,104 starts per quarter 65% higher than the Labour low point.

Ashworth knows he is talking rubbish. He is hoping that no-one notices.

I saw this from Radio 4 World at One’s Martha Kearney today:

New figures show that nearly 100,000 children are living in temporary accommodation in England after being made homeless. More #WATO

— Martha Kearney (@Marthakearney) September 24, 2015

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Of course voices on the left were jumping all over it pretty quickly:

The consequence of Cameron & IDS' cuts | Homelessness figures: Nearly 100,000 children in England 'homeless' http://t.co/zqy48CoGUC

— Unite the union (@unitetheunion) September 24, 2015

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Nearly 100,000 children are homeless in the 6th richest nation on Earth. This is David Cameron's legacy.

— George Aylett (@GeorgeAylett) September 24, 2015

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Another one of those terrible Tories stories. Kearney said “New figures” but it did sound a bit familiar though. A quick Google search threw up:

• Guardian, 2002: 100,000 children are homeless, Shelter report says
• Telegraph, 2003: 100,000 children are homeless
• Daily Mail, 2004: 100,000 children are homeless<l

The driver for this coverage is these statistics published today.

This chart from the report shows that we have been here before. Homelessness, in terms of households in temporary accommodation was worse than it is now from Q2 2000 to Q4 2009 inclusive. So Labour’s record was very poor. Homelessness was worse in relatively good times than it is now. It is increasing but it would be nice if the BBC could give us some perspective on the driver of these changes.

According to the latest list of Labour MPs endorsing possible leaders of the Labour party published by the New Statesman no London Labour MP has yet endorsed Andy Burnham. Indeed the Daily Mail points out that “Labour leadership favourite Andy Burnham has failed to secure support of a single MP south of Stoke”.

In London 16 out of 45 Labour MPs have come out for a candidate. 2 for rank outsider Mary Creagh, 6 for moderniser Liz Kendall and 8 for Brownite safe pair of hands Yvette Cooper.

West London MPs seems to be going for Cooper in a big way with Ruth Cadbury, Virendra Sharma, Stephen Pound and Andy Slaughter all coming out for her. No sign of the preferences of Ealing newbie Rupa Huq. Will she be the first London MP to back Burnham and his union approved campaign?