In 2016, Nick Clegg revealed that George Osborne replied to his plea for more social housing by saying: “No, all it does is produce more Labour voters.” The comment was revealing, because it showed that the Conservative Chancellor understood what many on the Left had long forgotten: that property relations have a significant bearing on how an economic system functions, and in whose interests.
But property rights are not, and have never been, neutral or fixed. The rules that govern property rights have varied over time, reflecting power and class relations. In the past century there have been two major shifts in the UK’s political economy, both of which were driven by major changes in ownership. In the 1940s, the shift from laissez-faire to the Keynesian post-war consensus was underpinned by widespread nationalisation, while in the 1980s a raft of privatisations ushered in a new age of neoliberalism.
But Margaret Thatcher’s promise of a ‘share-owning democracy’ never materialised. Instead, the reality has been a growing concentration of ownership and the rise of an extractive and short-termist corporate model that has fuelled inequality, financial instability and climate change. At the same time, the mass sell-off of public housing has destroyed the social fabric of communities across Britain. For those who own property, skyrocketing land prices have generated vast windfall gains, while those without any property are struggling to make ends meet in the face of eye-watering rents. Private developers have been left to shape our communities according to shareholder whims rather than human needs, while so-called Privately Owned Public Spaces (‘POPS’) have appeared all over the country. As Guy Shrubsole has highlighted, today half of England’s land is owned by less than 1% of the population.
