Distraction techniques
What is a PM to do? Booed in the streets and in restaurants, abandoned by his own MPs, an international joke, a liar and a fraud, he must once again distract the audience.
He is an old hand at this and has got away with it for years, this time he will try to do so by invoking the spirit of St. Margaret. His cunning plan is to copy her policy of selling council houses and extend it to the social housing provided by Housing Associations and charities.
He can do this because the government backs their loans, so he has them by the throat. But this is a disastrous policy.
Right to buy has reduced home ownership, as the poor lost their homes as interest rates soared and the wealthy built buy to let empires and house building collapsed.
It collapsed because councils weren’t allowed to use the money raised to build and anyway they weren’t going to build something they would be forced to give away at a loss, who would? The drop in annual housebuilding since has been almost entirely down to the drop in council house building.
It is why we have falling home ownership, young people unable to afford to buy, paying a fortune to rent and a wealthy generation of elderly home owners with a property empire.
All achieved by taking money off poor tax payers and using it to bribe voters.
Because that is what it is.
You could invent a right to buy policy that worked, smaller discounts over longer time, with part ownership and with the money immediately pumped back into house building. After all the councils have the land and they issue planning permission, all they need is the money and incentive to build.
Harold MacMillan made it to the top of the greasy poll by doing just that. But the Conservatives now just want to bribe voters with their own money.
Easier, quicker, simpler, and more certain to work. But a betrayal of their country’s best interests, again.
Still it might help the PM.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.