Labour retains key housing seats
The Conservative Party failed to capture a number of its key target seats in areas where Labour Party candidates campaigned heavily on housing.
Four Labour MPs criticised by the Conservative Party for using ‘scare tactics’ during the campaign about the party’s plans for housing all held their seats. The Conservative Party had named each of them in a dossier entitled ‘Labour’s housing scares’.
Two of the MPs, Karen Buck and Clive Efford, were on the list of seats the Conservatives hoped to capture if they were to gain an overall majority. Both were defending notional majorities of just over 3,000.
Ms Buck said tenants in her Westminster North constituency had were more swayed by controversial redevelopment of estates in nearby Hammersmith than by campaign literature. She said some tenants thought Conservatives had ‘ideological opposition to social housing’.
A third Labour MP, Andy Slaughter, who became MP for Hammersmith, won after housing featured frequently in his campaign. His seat was also a key marginal which he captured with a majority of just over 3,500.
Mr Slaughter said housing was the ‘number one issue’ in his constituency because of expensive private rents and subsequent high levels of demand for social housing.
His campaign argued that plans by the Conservative-run council for the demolition and redevelopment of some estates constituted ‘gerrymandering’ to attract wealthy people to the area.
He said his campaign against the council’s redevelopment plans and points made in a controversial paper about housing written by Mr Greenhalgh ‘did have an effect’ particularly with tenants and in the wards where redevelopment was proposed.
Stephen Greenhalgh, who is the Conservative leader of Hammersmith & Fulham council, denied that the paper he helped write for think tank Localis, which discussed changes to the security of social housing tenures, had cost his party parliamentary seats.
Mr Greenhalgh said: ‘The Localis paper played no part in the recent election result which saw the Labour party lose the largest number of seats on a bigger swing than any election since 1931.
‘Labour lies and scaremongering about Conservative policy towards public housing is hardly a new election tactic.’
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Chris | 07/08/2010 11:57 am
It is no surprise that where candidates stood on a platform of defending public services, housing, and social support that they succeeded against the election tide.
I wonder how many of the electorate are now questioning themselves as to how they elected a government so opposed to their will and interest. Sadly, for them, the result and question would have remained whoever formed the government.
It is an observable fact that we have a set of parliamentary representatives more highly composed of young boys and girls than ever before. There has been no maturing in a civilian career, no growth of perspective through a family life, little understanding outside of individual privilege and advantage for our new leaders.
It cannot be a coincidence that the politics of greed and self-interest that has ruled our nation for 30-years has spawned such individuals, nor that they should be successful. They have learned that presentation and media manipulation is all that is needed to ensure their chosen career path is fulfilled. Check out the CVs and see how many state their aspiration since childhood to become an MP. There waiting time may have been filled with working in Daddy’s firm, working in some spurious think-tank, or even running a spoon-fed business to pass the time, but no true life experience required.
This is not to slate our current masters, as the former masters and those who would replace them fit the same description. Yes there are some notable exceptions, and lets be thankful for their presence, but in the main there are fewer and fewer MPs entering parliament with an express aim to change matters for the good, driven from the injustice they have observed, or who wish to use their gained experience and understanding for the benefit of the nation. Yes, on the trading floors where short-term gain is all the rage, and personal fortunes are the motivation, the non-experienced are the norm, but what other viable business would put these children at the helm of their ships?
Why then do we accept government by the careerists when they clearly have one agenda, personal wealth, and understand little else. Just look at the outpouring of solutions for housing: end security, end affordability, maximise private sector use, limit overall supply. Is this really government in the interest of the nation, or government in the interest of a select few supported by the beguiled populace who aspire to be one of the few?
If you need to measure the wrongness of a philosophy you only need to look at how it treats dissent. A philosophy that hears dissent, can argue with it and learn from it, adapting to improve is surely what we require. Instead we have a driven repetition of popular phrases with aspirations cast against any who challenge. We have control through fear of the ‘others’ without the need for understanding or explanation. We have control on dissent, because both sides are playing the same game.
We need our honest and upstanding MPs (those who understand what it means to be poor, waged, salaried, unemployed, temporarily employed, employed, the general day-to-day life of getting buy and hoping that nothing more is taken away), those who have lived with us in our communities and place importance on long-term stability, we need these representatives to curtail the excesses of their careerist colleagues, and we need them to swiftly end this drift toward government for the short term privilege, and return to government for the nation.
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