In a scathing review of over a decade of Tory rule, Allister Heath takes the conservatives apart in the Daily Telegraph.
There have been too many broken promises. In 1991, 1.6 million people in the UK were paying the 40p tax rate, 3.5 per cent of adults; by 2027, 7.8 million people will be paying the 40p, 45p or some even higher rate — 14 per cent of adults, the IFS predicts. Every Tory manifesto since 2010 pledged to cut immigration, yet, farcically, the latest net migration figures are expected to hit between 650,000 and 997,000, a record.
Which genius imagined that a rapid increase in the population, combined with building less, would be electorally successful? Housebuilding, already woefully low, is falling precipitously, partly as a result of yet more red tape (this time with a green tinge) combined with the imbecilic refusal to allocate massively more land to residential development. Reforming the state, breaking with Blair-Brownism, delivering on manifesto promises, being truly conservative, it turns out, is too difficult, too costly, too unseemly: the whining is unbearable.
The combination of massive immigration and minimal home-building is making the already desperate cost-of-living crisis in the U.K. downright catastrophic. Neighboring Ireland is about to suffer a milder version of this. And even the United States is seeing, in a more diffuse way, how high rates of immigration and slow rates of construction in the economically vibrant metro areas are driving house prices through the roof. This puts incredible pressure on family formation.