The government is pursuing an ideologically driven housing policy that takes up where Thatcherism left off.

The right to buy helped decide the 1983 election and the Tories hope that promoting home-ownership will do the same in 2015.

The influential Conservative think tank Renewal has recently argued that tackling housing is the only way David Cameron can connect with working-class people, particularly outside south-east England.

In an echo of the 1950s, we can expect a new-homes bidding war between Cameron and Ed Miliband, but pledging to build our way out of this housing crisis without addressing the underlying causes creates the conditions for the next.

Since 1980, British housing policy has been defined by slavish promotion of the property market and the undermining of council housing.

Whichever party has been in power, every step has moved in this direction.

Although the decline began under Labour, the Thatcher government deliberately set out to destroy municipal housing, but perversely it still built more council homes than new Labour, which built only 7,612 during its 13 years in power.

From its peak of 30 per cent at the end of the 1970s, council housing is now only 10 per cent of the national housing stock, but "austerity" is being used as camouflage for finally reducing council housing to a rump.

The essence of Conservative housing policy is its quasi-religious belief in private home ownership.

Owner occupation has been more popular in Britain than in most other countries for many years, but has now become a political holy cow.

This is reflected in George Osborne's attempts to stimulate economic revival by providing state subsidies for mortgages.

One of the great housing myths is that only social housing is supported by the taxpayer.

In fact, council housing has long been a net contributor to the Exchequer, while home ownership - including various tax breaks and discounts for the right to buy - has been bankrolled by government. This exposes the "free market" lie and the argument that owning a home is "natural."

Currently Osborne is gambling at least £12 billion on the help to buy scheme by underwriting mortgages for people who could not otherwise afford them.

Many economists have questioned the wisdom of this, but political criticism has been muted because few mainstream politicians want to be seen questioning the moral and social superiority of home ownership.

Both Tory and Labour governments have used various devices to reduce the role and significance of council housing.

In the current context of public spending cuts, previous "stock transfer" programmes, which rely on state finance that could be spent on direct investment, are in abeyance.

But the ideological attack on social housing tenants is not - as shown by the grotesque example of the bedroom tax.

However, even more insidious and long-lasting measures were contained in the 2011 Localism Act.

Beneath the populist, and illusory, veneer of giving power to local communities, the government has demolished some of the pillars of non-market housing.

One of the distinguishing features of being a council tenant - and to a lesser extent a housing association tenant - is legal protection from eviction. Housing security, like job security, has been vital to the stability of working-class communities for generations, but the Tories don't like either.

Within the Localism Act are powers to end security of tenure for new social housing tenants, as well as to force homeless families into the private rented sector.

Again, this happened with barely a whimper from Labour, whose former housing minister Caroline Flint celebrated her first day in the job in 2008 by calling for an end to secure tenancies.

Meanwhile the government's new "affordable rents" policy allows landlords to charge up to 80 per cent of the market rate for "social" housing.

Taken together with benefit cuts, government policy is aimed at reshaping Britain's housing landscape.

This intention was made explicit by Conservative "housing guru" Peter King in 1988. "The aim should be to privatise the social rented stock and allow market relations to develop."

Just as in the labour market and the NHS, the government wants to deregulate and marketise housing, while of course maintaining state subsidies - including public land - to property speculators.

The deification of private property advances a host of ideological as well as political and economic beliefs that are fundamental to the neoliberal project.

Engels observed in 1872 that a worker paying a mortgage is less likely to go on strike and home ownership still creates the illusion of having a stake in capitalism, while encouraging consumerism, an individualistic view of the world and providing a repository for flows of global finance.

But in the aftermath of the sub-prime crisis the myth that "you can't go wrong with bricks and mortar" lies in tatters, while millions find themselves unable to find a decent home they can afford, condemned to using a credit card to pay the mortgage, languishing on the housing waiting list, living with parents or paying ever-rising rents to private landlords.

Our housing policy is broken at every level, but mending it requires the Labour Party to lead a campaign for real change that includes having the political courage to challenge the mortgage fetish and unashamedly promote council housing.

Housing represents the widest gap between politicians and the electorate and it's one that Labour must fill, before the Tories do.

Next week's column will examine Labour's housing policy.