IN THE list reeled out by Chancellor Alistair Darling of why people might want to move house in the current market, the simple need for a home was not one of them.
The measures announced this week were never primarily aimed at the shameful housing crisis afflicting those without an adequate home but at propping up and keeping the private house market moving, while throwing a nod to the demands of speculative builders who ride high on the hog when the market suits them and cry for help from the public purse when it doesn’t.
Nor did the aid to the builders come with any attached conditions to protect workers in the most casualised and dangerous sector of the construction industry. That would have shown some traditional Labour instinct remained at the heart of Government.
But at least there is an upside. Falling house prices brings home ownership within reach of greater numbers of people at the lower earning scales.
As one commentator observed this week: “When faced with what is said to be the greatest collapse in the housing market of modern times, the Government has decided to do virtually nothing. Excellent.”
In short, another bungled stunt, intended to make it appear that the Government is doing something, but which is in fact pretty ineffective and at the same time exposes the widening and corroding rift between the Prime Minister and his Chancellor.
When Mr Darling attends the TUC Congress in Brighton next week, he will face some blunt language and some stark warnings about why this market-exclusive approach is failing the millions who started as the worst off and are now facing the biggest squeeze, not just in their standard of living but in their ability to cope with the basic essentials of life.
As Dave Prentis says in these pages: “It’s no good saying you feel the pain of the low paid who are always going to be hit hardest by the huge rises in basic food and fuel. Do something about it.”
Ditching the obsession with the myth that the private sector can deliver public services better would be a sign both of change and a willingness to do something about it. As would a properly funded public house-building programme. As would scrapping the Private Finance Initiative and a introducing a windfall tax on the energy companies’ windfall profits.
Demands for the PFI to go, for the sake of efficiency and value for public money, let alone better services, better managed received a fillip from the Commons Public Accounts Committee this week which spotlighted the extent to which private companies attempt to extort funds out of local authorities with restrictive practices and contracts.
Billions of pounds of public resources are being channelled into private pockets rather than the bread-and-butter issues affecting those whose needs Labour in Government should be addressing.
Gordon Brown and his ministers are quick to dismiss the unions for fear of the Government being seen to be the captive of its party paymasters.
This is a blinkered vision since it is the unions who are closest to the concerns of millions of people who happen also to be precisely those voters who are becoming disillusioned at what they see as a Labour Government turning its back on them.
The Government has more to lose by ignoring the unions than it does in listening to them.
If it is votes at the next general election, more than rational argument and adherence to the Labour Party’s founding principles, which moves the Government to action it should weigh the voices of the unions before the weight of their cash.
Otherwise, some day down the line, it may find there is considerably less cash to weigh. And there will be no point wailing crocodile tears in Opposition when the Tories in power move on with a more ruthless assault on the rights and wellbeing of trade union members in this country.
