There are few things most politicians hate more than a crude yes-or-no question. But when asked last autumn if he was instinctively a yimby rather than a nimby – meaning someone enthusiastically in favour of new housing in their own back yard, rather than a foot-dragging objector – for once Keir Starmer answered unflinchingly in the affirmative.
It’s rare for Labour to say an unhesitating yes to anything lately, instead of hedging that actually it’s a bit more complicated than that, or else too expensive. The plan to build 1.5m new homes in five years is both those things with knobs on and yet somehow – feel free to touch wood here – it’s one of the last genuinely big Labour ideas not to get its wings clipped.
