LAST week a poll conducted for the Times reported that trade union members are as likely to vote Reform as Labour, tied on 28 per cent. 

The less than inspiring Makerfield by-election hustings on last week’s Question Time gives us a clue to why the organised working class is turning its back on Labour, and why the populist and fascist right is gaining ground.

A predominantly working-class area with over 72 per cent home ownership, the Makerfield audience was rightly exercised about plans to develop housing on greenfield sites in areas with a high risk of flooding as well as the loss of treasured green space.  

As one young member of the audience pointed out what is needed is council homes not more private developments. Yet developers plead poverty and claim they can’t meet their targets — refusing to build out their schemes unless their affordable homes contributions are slashed.  

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, in response to developer intransigence, reduced the target from 35 per cent to 20 per cent, and less in some cases to “kick-start” the stalled housebuilding programme in the capital.

The excellent Housing Rebellion and Refurbish Don’t Demolish groups have been working with communities to stop the destruction of Council and Housing Association estates, which have been in the sights of developers for decades. However, we have a grants system that favours demolition and development in favour of refurbishment and retrofitting, despite this being more cost-effective and far less polluting.

In the last five years alone around 16,000 social homes have been demolished, with every town and city able to cite numerous cases of such homes lying empty pending redevelopment. This is in addition to the loss of more than 61,000 social homes in England to the right to buy (RTB) over the same period.  

Despite of the crisis of housing affordability, the 135,000 homeless households in temporary accommodation in England and a million on housing waiting lists, the government continues to resist the abolition of the RTB in England instead of following Scotland and Wales and stopping this ongoing privatisation of a vital public asset.  

The government’s proposed RTB amendments, while not unwelcome, will be reversible by any future Tory or Reform government. If politicians are serious about reducing the welfare Bill they would do well to reintroduce the rent controls and security of tenure that Thatcher abolished in 1988, instead of continuing to pay private landlords billions to relet former council homes — often as temporary accommodation, and always at much higher rents than if they were still in the public sector.

Local authorities, grappling with nationally imposed housing targets and lacking in-house housing and development expertise are increasingly looking to hive off their social housing estates — succumbing to developer insistence on increasing housing density and not providing the social-rent homes that every local authority knows is required to meet housing need.

Stuck in the middle are those council tenants, residents who exercised their right to buy, and the tenants of those buy-to-let landlords living on estates that have suffered over 40 years’ managed decline, with hundreds of thousands now fighting to stop the demolition of their homes and the displacement of their communities.

These are the conditions being exploited by the far right — piggy backing on to the racist policies of this government to blame the housing crisis on migrants. If Andy Burnham wins on Thursday, he needs to heed the words of that young man on Question Time and ensure local government is restored to the primary supplier of affordable homes in the country.  

The left needs to get involved in the housing campaigns in their communities — providing support and expertise to tenants and residents groups who may otherwise find Reform and the fascist right moving in and using this issue to divide the working class and build support for their hate-filled politics.