Given Labour’s wide but shallow general election victory in July, it is hardly surprising that its poor polling performance and the rise of the far right are causing angst in political circles (Labour’s big Farage problem has a simple solution: build, build, build, 8 December). One problem is that reliance on the C-word – change, an effectively directionless concept – left voters with no clear picture of Labour’s intentions. If Barack Obama represented change, so does Donald Trump. The plan for change, while containing some worthwhile targets, is essentially a retail offer, heavily reliant on the dread word delivery, often outside the government’s control.
There are other C-words that provide a better basis for a winning programme. These include competence, conviction, consistency, coherence and communication – and in all these areas, Labour gives the appearance of floundering. There is time to turn things around in the next four and a half years, but this needs a programme of political education. If it appears that Labour is heading for a one-term government, two other C-words come into play: collaboration with other broadly progressive parties and charisma. Labour is unlikely to prosper with leadership languishing in the polling doldrums. It should not leave it too long before considering who might be best placed to take Labour forward.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
• John Harris is right to point out that “the housing crisis” is the result of a multi-decade failure to build homes for social rent, but wrong to imagine it could be addressed by expecting big housing developers to make up the shortfall.
Developers are salivating over Labour’s attack on the planning system and looking forward to huge releases of land to build market homes on our most productive farmland in southern England. But they’ve repeatedly shown attempts to oblige them to build social housing will be thwarted by “viability” provisions allowing them not to build where their profit levels fall below 20%. The £4bn housing infrastructure fund was an attempt to stuff them with public subsidy to persuade them to build.
The most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the assault on planning, launched by Eric Pickles more than a decade ago, are billionaire-funded, neoliberal “thinktanks”. Ministers should ask themselves why they want the 1947 vision abolished, excluding communities and councillors from planning decisions and giving big developers a free hand.
Jon Reeds
Smart Growth UK
• How many of the homes built will be for mixed developments based around large amounts of social housing with lifelong tenure, asks John Harris. In Leicestershire, the county council has planning permission for 2,750 homes next to the M1. This month it successfully amended its permission, reducing the proportion of “affordable” homes from a minimum of 40% to 10% because the scheme was otherwise not viable.
It was pointed out that if larger houses were built instead of affordable ones, then fitting 2,750 homes on the site would be difficult. That figure was a maximum, said its representative. Getting houses built even when planning permission is granted is as effective as pushing on a piece of string.
Stephen Walkley
Lutterworth, Leicestershire
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