Lucy Powell took to undermining Labour’s housing offering on Politics Live this afternoon, complaining the government has built too many in her constituency in recent years:

“Manchester’s a very beautiful place, a nice place to live, and over the 10-15 year period, the last few years and the forthcoming few years, there’ll be 50,000 new homes in my constituency alone, so that brings with it other challenges as well…”

This is a bizarre NIMBY criticism from Powell, especially given she was just appointed as Labour’s shadow housing secretary in Sunday’s reshuffle. Is this the Labour Party’s new attitude to house building? 

Has Lucy Powell quietly become the most gaffe-prone member of the shadow cabinet? The morning after the local elections she inadvertently praised the government’s election offering; she undermined Starmer’s ventilator point-scoring; and in December she was caught on camera saying deciding if Labour wants Britain to succeed or fail is a “challenge”. She’s starting to make Richard Burgon look like a canny political operator…