Houses for votes: Ross Clark shows that for electoral reasons the government is rigging the market to ensure that the property boom continues.

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 26-JUN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

It is little wonder that Gordon Brown last week hurried to the pastel sofas of the GMTV studio to reject the warning by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, that people should think twice about buying a home at current prices. There is one figure which the government is going to be watching even more closely than the opinion polls in the year leading up to the next election--the Halifax house price index. Never mind Iraq, never mind foundation hospitals, never mind the European constitution; there is only one matter capable of causing the catastrophic collapse in electoral support needed for Labour to lose the next election: that is a large drop in house prices.

Whatever they think of Labour's other achievements or non-achievements in office, there is little question that the average household feels enriched by the Labour years, and enriched for one reason: the value of property has gone up, and gone up far faster than general prices. Averaged across the country, houses are now worth 2.4 times what they were when Labour came...

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