United Kingdom (UK)

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Labour leader said Thatcher had “set loose our natural entrepreneurialism” during her time as prime minister.

“Across Britain, there are people who feel disillusioned, frustrated, angry, worried. Many of them have always voted Conservative but feel that their party has left them,” he said. “I understand that. I saw that with my own party and acted to fix it. But I also understand that many will still be uncertain about Labour. I ask them to take a look at us again.”

[…] 

Starmer said it was “in this sense of public service” that he had overseen a dramatic change in the Labour party – cutting its ties with former leader Jeremy Corbyn and removing the whip.

“The course of shock therapy we gave our party had one purpose: to ensure that we were once again rooted in the priorities, the concerns and the dreams of ordinary British people. To put country before party,” he said.

In the years following the 2008 global financial crisis, the “big three” housebuilders that dominate the new-build market in Britain have been able to increase their profits without significantly increasing the number of homes they build. This has happened despite political pressure to increase UK housing supply.

They were able to do this, we argue, because they have built up significant structural power: they can use their control of housing land and housebuilding to secure state support for initiatives that benefit their shareholders by pushing up their share prices and profitability.

[…] 

We argue this state support via planning liberalisation has given volume housebuilders what’s called monopsonistic market power in local land markets. In other words, it’s created a buyer-dominated market. This has kept the cost of their land relatively flat while UK house prices continued to rise. 

[…] 

When market power in local land markets was combined with structural power over the state, we believe volume housebuilders were able to increase their profit margins rather than ramp up delivery to help the government meet its target of 300,000 new homes per year in England. Our research shows it was in the interests of the volume housebuilders not to rapidly increase their housing supply for two main reasons.

Key arguments;

• Post-GFC, the big three successfully adopted a “margins over volume” strategy, allowing them to generate large amounts of cash, most of which has been returned to their shareholders.
• The state played a crucial role in increasing their profit margins, through two main interventions, both of which benefitted larger housebuilders over smaller housebuilders;
  • Mortgage market support schemes which (likely) inflated their sales prices, and allowed them to wind-down their own shared equity schemes.
  • Renegotiation of section 106 agreements and the subsequent liberalisation of the planning system.
• The state’s prioritisation of large sites in the planning system also provided the big-three with (monopsonistic) market power, keeping down the input cost of their land.
• The state shaped the land and housing market in this way because it perceived itself as a necessarily passive actor in the production of housing, reliant on the structural power of the largest housebuilders.

We conclude that in order to expand housing supply in a way that aligns with social and environmental needs, the state needs to recognise its own structural power, and assume a larger and more active role in the housebuilding and land market.

In Scotland, people who meet a broad definition of homelessness get immediate access to short-term shelter and then put on a list for permanent housing, which is usually heavily discounted. Healthcare, a leading cause of debt in the United States, is largely free for everyone in the United Kingdom, as is treatment for the mental health and substance abuse issues that can exacerbate homelessness.

Few people here sleep on the street — about 30 in Glasgow and 40 in Edinburgh on a given night, according to Simon Community Scotland, a leading charity that deploys outreach teams and offers services in both cities. That’s up from recent years when the numbers could often be counted on one or two hands, but still a manageable figure for a pair of cities with a combined population of about 1.2 million people.

The city of Los Angeles, just over three times as populous, estimates that 46,260 people sleep on its streets on a given night.

London mayor Sadiq Khan signalled a move away from demolition not backed by residents in 2018, declaring that estate regeneration schemes need to obtain support through mandatory ballots. Since then, high profile plans to demolish architecturally acclaimed estates Cressingham Gardens and Central Hill have been "paused" by Lambeth Council after an independent review by the late crossbench peer Bob Kerslake recommended a "fundamental reset" to the council's handling of the redevelopments.

Sentiment is also moving sharply against what is known as the "cross-subsidy" approach to regeneration that has dominated in the past two decades, in which council estates are demolished to make way for expensive for-sale properties that in turn fund building a proportion of more affordable homes. The model was declared "bust" by housing association leaders as far back as 2019, before the economic downturn left thousands of apartments unsold across developments in London.

While plans for demolition come under scrutiny, more emphasis is being placed on infill development, such as Camden's rejuvenation of the post-war Kiln Place social housing estate. Working with the London Borough of Camden, Peter Barber Architects upgraded the whole estate and increased its density without demolishing any existing homes.

Rishi Sunak’s posh-boy reshuffle means members of the infamous Bullingdon Club have occupied the great offices of state for 85% of the time since 2010.

Since 11 May 2010, a member of the Bullingdon Club has been either Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, or Chancellor for 4122 days – over 11 years continuously. At one point, Bullingdon Boys occupied half of the great offices of state - but had been absent since Boris Johnson was ousted from No10.

But the shock return of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary means the elitist organisation is once again represented at the top of government.