Boris Johnson promises to create four million new homeowners
Updating a policy of Margaret Thatcher, the PM details a plan to enable more low-income renters to buy their own social housing.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to reset his embattled leadership overnight Thursday with vows to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, including contentious new measures to boost home ownership.
Mr Johnson promised “many more” 95 per cent mortgages to help first-time buyers on to the housing ladder as part of plans to “unbolt the door” to home ownership for more than four million people.
After narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote among his own Conservative MPs on Monday, he is under pressure to turn the page on a series of scandals including lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street.
In a speech in Blackpool, he promised new reforms “to help people cut costs in every area of household expenditure – from food to energy to childcare to transport and housing”.
“This government is on the side of the British public in coping with those pressures,” he said.
The scale of the inflationary crisis hitting millions of Britons was underlined as the price of filling up the average family car topped £100 ($176) for the first time, according to the RAC motoring group. RAC spokesman Simon Williams called it “a truly dark day” for hard-pressed drivers, and urged the government to slash sales tax on petrol and diesel.
Mr Johnson said much of the crisis was caused by factors beyond the government’s control, such as the impact of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
But with two difficult by-elections coming up this month, unhappy Tory MPs want bolder measures including tax cuts after 40 per cent of them voted against Mr Johnson on Monday.
The OECD has warned Britain must cut taxes or raise spending, forecasting it will suffer the developed world’s weakest economic growth next year.
Mr Johnson did not promise any such cuts in Blackpool, although he and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are working on another tax-focused speech for the coming days. The Prime Minister did warn against a “wage-price spiral” by workers, and signalled no compromise with Britain’s biggest rail union, which is planning to shut down the train network this month to press wage demands.
Updating a signature policy of Margaret Thatcher, Mr Johnson detailed a plan to enable more low-income renters to buy their own social housing in England.
Senior minister Michael Gove told Sky News “home ownership is not just good for individuals, it’s good for society overall”. He vowed the measures would help redress a shortage in housing stock that has seen both purchase and rental prices rocket well out of reach of many Britons, especially younger adults.
But Labour noted the plan would need billions in extra money, which Mr Gove admitted was not on offer, relying instead on existing funding at a time when the Treasury is already trying to rein in government spending.
“By their own reckoning, this will help a few thousand families a year,” senior Labour MP Lisa Nandy told BBC radio. “For those families that will be very welcome,” she said, while warning it could make “the housing crisis worse for everybody else”.
The government plan focuses on making it easier for those on welfare to save towards a mortgage deposit. But it said little about building new homes in England, which is often hampered by local planning objections.
Housing policy expert Toby Lloyd doubted the plan would have much effect. “I’d be very surprised if it happens in anything like the scale they expect, and if it does I don’t expect it to have that much impact,” he told BBC radio.
Under Conservative party rules, Mr Johnson cannot be challenged again for a year, which leaves little time for any new leader to emerge before the next general election due by 2024.
But his Tory enemies are still manoeuvring, with reports Mr Johnson faces “vote strikes” to paralyse the government’s legislative agenda.
Such tactics hurt Theresa May’s three-year stint in Downing Street, before she was brought down in 2019 by Mr Johnson over Britain’s exit from the EU.
Mr Johnson is set to launch another counteroffensive on the Brexit front by introducing legislation next week to rewrite a pact with the EU governing trade with Northern Ireland, unless Brussels agrees to changes. Mr Gove denied Mr Johnson was seeking to appease Brexit hardliners on the Tory backbenches after this week’s vote.
However, The Times reported that Mr Johnson faces a rebellion by Brexiteers after claims that he weakened legislation that would unilaterally abolish parts of the Northern Ireland protocol.
Senior members of the European Research Group believe the latest version has been stripped of key clauses obliging the government to end the role of EU law and regulation in the province in the event of the bill being passed.
They have warned No.10 that unless the clauses are restored before the bill is published next week, Mr Johnson will face another revolt.
AFP
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