England

According to the media, 8 June 2001 was historic in British politics. The day heralded a second consecutive term in office for a Labour Government with an absolute Parliamentary majority. Had this occurred earlier, commentators might have expected housing to be a major policy priority. For most of the twentieth century, Labour was associated with state involvement in housing, especially over the provision of homes for the poor. But this is the twenty-first century. When Labour came into office in 1997, its government took unto itself a new mistress. This companion’s influence was often unacknowledged but it did mean that Labour’s former affections now came to be portrayed rather patronisingly as beyond their sell-by-date. This shadow-like mistress, whose power became obvious in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s loving references to his Prudence, induced minor changes in housing policy. In a first term in which the health of the economy was given priority over social equity, Labour did little to mitigate the accumulating disfunctionalities of national housing trends for low-income people. In the previous two-to-three decades, these disfunctionalities had both intensified and mutated into new forms. This generated paradoxical tensions. Housing shortages came to be accompanied by over-supply. Unwanted homes now came alongside housing shortages. Rising house prices sat beside demands for a larger housing stock. Yet these tensions were not spatially even, with rural areas facing peculiar kinds of housing problems.