Boris Johnson is unlikely to match Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ revolution

Analysis: Political gains of a scheme for housing association tenants would be small, and it could create sense of injustice

Talk that Boris Johnson will offer many of England's housing association tenants the possibility of buying their homes will remind older voters of Margaret Thatcher's council house sell-off which saw around 2 million households join her pursuit of a property-owning democracy". Younger voters might also remember the idea has appeared in both the 2015 and 2019 Tory manifestos without ever being implemented.

There are 4.4m affordable homes of varying kinds in England, but the sheer complexity of selling off property that is not in public ownership and the cost to the taxpayer of subsidising sales that could exceed 1bn a year are among the reasons such a sell-off has never happened. Add to that widespread concerns that the policy will only deplete England's already scant affordable housing stock while the sector estimates 4.2 million people are in need, and the chances of the PM repeating the seismic property revolution delivered by Thatcher's gambit look slim.