Keir Starmer's 'steps' to change Britain have a housing-shaped hole: Jayne Dowle

Homes which have enough space for all members of a family to live harmoniously together – with youngsters therefore less inclined to roam the streets causing trouble – and are well-maintained.

If I was a tenant in one of the 4.6 million English households living in private rented accommodation – making up 19 per cent, or almost a fifth of all households – and my landlord was neglecting the property, refusing to repair the broken boiler or rotting window frames, and I’d no choice but to pay for gas and electricity by expensive (possibly force-fitted) meter, I’d be wondering exactly how Great British Energy would benefit me.

And if I was a twentysomething, trying to scrape together a deposit to buy my first house, or a parent of young children desperate to afford three bedrooms but priced out, I’d be thinking, yet again, that politicians simply don’t care about the generations behind them, the ones who will pay the taxes to fund their pensions and health and social care.

And I’d conclude that they have short memories too. Can it really be only 11 months since Sir Keir Starmer was making the House of Commons cry with the tragic tale of ‘James’, a police officer in Selby, north Yorkshire?

James, you may recall, was having to sell his family home because his mortgage payments had soared due to rising interest rates.

“Why should James and his family pay the cost of the prime minister’s failure?” the Labour leader asked at prime minister’s questions on June 21. “The Tory mortgage penalty is going to cost [James] £400 more each and every month . . . He told me this morning they’ve decided to sell their house to downsize. He’s just told his children they are going to have to start sharing bedrooms.”

I can’t help but wonder what ‘James’ is thinking now. Where was the would-be Prime Minister’s pledge to offer solutions to people in his position? Perhaps Labour would point towards the promise of “sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability”.

Perhaps cynics would recall that perhaps James and Selby only made it into prime minister’s questions because there was a by-election in the Selby and Ainsty constituency, prompted by the resignation of Conservative Nigel Adams, once a close ally of Boris Johnson.

The Labour candidate, Keir Mather, won and became the ‘Baby of the House’ at the age of just 26, the first Labour MP to represent Selby ever.

“I’ve spoken to people who were born in Selby and want to buy a house here,” Mather told reporters. “How can it be the case that this is now an unattainable dream?”

And how can it be the case that Labour appears to have forgotten all of this in less than a year? Yes, it’s true that if you look on the Labour Party’s website, you’ll find details of Labour’s housing plan.

It reminds us that “under the Tories, Britain faces a housing emergency that has left millions unable to plan their lives, start families, or build a future for themselves and their kids”.

There’s talk of a “chronic shortage of homes” and the “housing emergency” and a promise that in power, Starmer would do things differently, by introducing “a better system, that builds homes local people can afford, delivers new infrastructure and improves green spaces.”.

But no detail of how this might be set in motion, except the promise to add yet another layer to our already complex planning categories – grey belt, the neglected areas of wasteland and car parks currently classed as green belt, but with potential for development – and a housebuilding target of one and half million new homes within five years, but nothing on where and how these might be built, except in unspecified “new towns”.

No mention of measures to bring existing housing stock up to scratch either, or develop innovative fiscal measures to make it easier for first-time buyers, for example, to purchase pre-owned homes rather than the constant push towards new bricks and mortar. And there’s absolutely no acknowledgement of social housing or mortgage interest rates.

The big problem is that Labour is absolutely torn ideologically over housing. Whilst left-wingers yearn wistfully for the Clement Attlee days – the post-war Labour Prime Minister oversaw the building of more than a million homes, 80 per cent of which were council houses, to replace bombed out and slum dwellings – senior party figures find themselves embroiled in bitter rows over paying the correct tax on second homes. Unless Sir Keir can unite these inconvenient truths, there’s no point making pledges.