Labour leader Keir Starmer has unveiled his party’s plans to remedy the ills of Britain’s housing market and help as many as 1.5 million people onto the property ladder.
In an address to Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, the Leader of the Opposition declared that Labour is “the party of home ownership in Britain today”.
He pledged to build more properties, adding that he will also give first-time buyers first refusal on new housing developments local to them.
As well as this, he will raise stamp duty on foreign buyers to deter them from buying residential property en masse before locals have a chance to acquire it.
Culminating from this, say Labour, will be a Britain where 70% of the population own their home within the first five years of them reaching Downing Street – a 5% rise from today’s figure of 65%.
Labour currently sit 17 points ahead of the Conservatives in YouGov’s opinion polls – the largest lead for Labour ever seen by the polling company since its inception in 2001.
Should the party be elected with Starmer as leader, it would mark the first non-Conservative government since 2010. Whether the housing market – and those who wish to climb upon the property ladder – is a beneficiary of such an outcome remains to be seen.
One Response
The problems in the last decade at least in building new homes are land held by wealthy developers in land banks, shortages in materials supply, lack of skilled labour particularly bricklayers and corporate developers’ greed for profits! How’ s he going to fix all of that? Sound bites are one thing the reality quite another!