KEIR Starmer has been accused of “flip-flopping” once again - this time over housing in the green belt and extending the voting franchise to EU citizens.
The Labour leader faced a furious backlash earlier this month after he announced that the party will abandon its commitment to free university tuition.
The pledge was one of 10 made by Starmer during the contest to become Labour leader, many of which he subsequently ditched.
And now, in an interview with The Times, Starmer said that he would give local authorities and residents more powers to build on green belt land in order to meet local housing needs.
The Tories, on the other hand, have said they would enhance protections on green belt land, and accused Starmer of flip-flopping.
Earlier this month the Opposition leader committed to reinstating mandatory housebuilding targets dropped by Rishi Sunak after a backbench rebellion.
Simon Clarke, former Tory housing secretary, warned Tory MPs they were at risk of becoming the “party of nimbyism”. NIMBY is shorthand for “Not in my back yard”.
Starmer (pictured above) said he believed Clarke was right, telling The Times: “And in doing so, they have killed the dream, the aspiration of home owning for a whole generation. It will fall to us to deal with that.”
The Times said Starmer was willing to make changes to the rules on the green belt, and allow council and residents more power to build on areas they see fit.
“We need to have that discussion,” he said. “But it cannot be reduced to a simple discussion of will you or will you not build on the green belt. This is why it’s important for local areas to have the power to decide where housing is going to be.
“Very often the objections that people have to housebuilding on the green belt are valid because the control by landowners and developers mean that the houses are proposed in areas where it’s quite obvious that there’s going to be a local concern.
“Give local authorities, local areas more power to decide where it will be and you alleviate that problem. So it’s not as binary or straightforward as ‘green belt, not green belt’. It’s how you direct where the housing will be.”
One Tory minister accused Starmer of “making it up as he goes along”.
“I think we need to take anything that Keir Starmer says with a very big pinch of salt," transport minister Richard Holden told GB News.
It comes as Labour appears ready to back Housing Secretary Michael Gove’s renting reforms after Starmer said they were “broadly right” in an interview with the BBC, adding that it was a “step in the right direction”.
In the Times interview, Starmer appeared to roll back on commitments he made two days ago to extend the voting franchise for EU nationals after Gove accused Labour of trying to “rig” future elections.
It came after Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted the Tories had been “gerrymandering” when introducing voter ID rules.
While Starmer accused Gove of being “hysterical”, he suggested the idea would not make it into the party’s manifesto.
“This isn’t policy,” he said. “We will debate a number of things.
“But…I know that because of the damaged country we’ll inherit I have to be laser-focused in government on the missions I’ve said we will deliver. We’ve got five missions. None of them involve electoral change.”
Tory party chairman Greg Hands said on Twitter: “Not just one daily flip flop from Sir Keir today, but multiple “X homes - or no homes - on the Green Belt “X votes - or not - for EU nationals.”
Starmer is due to address the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) on Wednesday, promising to back the “builders not the blockers”.
