Home truths: the only thing Labour is building is a bigger, more dysfunctional housing market | George Monbiot

Private developers offer politicians a simple solution for bulldozing through this crisis - build more. But it won't work

Build baby, build. That's about the intellectual limit of the government's housing strategy. Millions are under-housed, so let's bulldoze" the planning system and build more homes. But it's not nearly so simple.

As soon as anyone challenges the policy, the government brands them a nimby - another of the crude truncations that pass for debate on this issue: nimbys versus yimbys. So before I go further, let me state that I want to see lots of new social and genuinely affordable housing built as part of a massive programme to solve the worst housing crisis of any wealthy country. I've been making similar calls for years, not least in the report I co-authored for the Labour party in 2019: Land for the Many. I oppose Labour's current approach for a different reason. It will fail.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist