With “Things Can Only Get Better” almost on repeat, Lisa Nandy and Thangam Debbonaire manned the decks last night at LabourList’s conference disco. Nandy opened her set with an “it’s Britney b*tch” mic-dropper before immediately playing “Oops I Did It Again”. Debbonaire introduced herself in style: “My name’s Thangam Debbonaire, I want to see those hands in the air!“. This was the cocktail of the night…

Neither shaken nor stirred…

With Labour riding high in the polls, the party is doing its best to make itself look like a credible choice for government. In addition to purging the loony left, wooing big business and taking lessons from the blob, they’re now even ditching their own unworkable policies. One such cause is market failure-inducing rent controls. Last night on LBC, Rachel Reeves slammed Sadiq Khan’s favourite pet housing policy:

“If you take Scotland, for example, they’ve got rent controls and yet Edinburgh and Glasgow are two cities in the UK that have had some of the highest increases in rent. So these things don’t always work“.

At least someone in Labour isn’t committed to doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Curiously, Reeves also denied that the party had performed yet another U-turn on the policy, claiming:

“I don’t think under Keir’s leadership, rent controls have ever been our policy. So I don’t think there’s a U-Turn there”. 

This may come as news to Lisa Nandy who, just months ago, called for council leaders to be given the powers to freeze rents. A reminder, as it clearly slipped Rachel’s mind, Lisa Nandy is the Shadow Cabinet Minister responsible for housing policy.

Not withstanding the best efforts of the opposition, the government’s bill banning public bodies making spending decisions based on political judgements of foreign powers, including in relation to the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, was granted its second reading. Co-conspirators could be forgiven for failing to understand Labour’s position in the vote. Despite supposedly opposing BDS, Labour whipped their MPs to support an amendment which would block the bill from passing to its second reading – all after saying they would not repeal the bill should they get into power. On the actual vote, they abstained.

Before opposing the bill’s passage, Lisa Nandy said Labour was “not in favour” of BDS, a movement which “singles out the world’s only Jewish state”. Why would Nandy, who was formerly a chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, oppose a bill banning an action that “singles out the world’s only Jewish state”…

One explanation for Labour’s equivocation could be found in the source of their legal advice. Lisa Nandy and David Lammy commissioned Richard Hermer KC to draft a position. Richard Hermer has previously co-authored a chapter in a book called “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation”, co-edited by notorious anti-Israel activist and crank Asa Winstanley. Amongst Asa’s other publications is a book subtitled “How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn”.

A senior Jewish leader, supportive of the bill, tells Guido:

“After a bruising experience with the Labour Party and its alleged opposition to BDS, you would have thought they would have thought more carefully about who they take legal advice from. Richard Hermer is clearly partial. I would question the Party’s judgement on this one. Richard Hermer’s association with Asa Winstanley of all people should have been a major red flag.”

Guido is at a loss for how Labour came to select Richard as their independent legal expert. On an entirely unrelated note, he gave £5,000 to Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign…

Clearly Lisa Nandy had her Weetabix this morning. She’s just wrapped up her keynote speech at the Housing 23 conference in Manchester, where she launched a thundering tirade against the “cowardice” of those proposing “politically easy” solutions to the housing crisis. Her rent control diatribe may as well have come straight from the Adam Smith Institute:

“…rent controls that cut rents for some, will almost certainly leave others homeless. It might be politically easier to put a sticking plaster on our deep-seated problems, but if it is cowardice that got us here, it is never going to get us out…”

While it is refreshing to see a Labour politician finally understand rent controls are a disastrous idea, this is quite a damascene conversion for the shadow Housing Secretary. Just nine months ago at Labour Party Conference, Nandy herself declared she was “personally very interested and attracted by the idea” of… rent controls. She even said her party would consider handing mayors new powers to “freeze rent increases in there local areas over the winter“. Now, apparently, she’s considered that idea and decided it would be an act of cowardice…

Unfortunately this puts her on a war path with her party’s own Mayor of London, and front bench colleague Tulip Siddiq. Both call for rent freezes every five minutes, with Tulip Siddiq sending a written question to Michael Gove on the idea back in April. Sadiq Khan called for a two-year rent freeze just days ago. So that’s Labour’s top housing spokesperson insisting the Mayor of London’s policy proposal would actually increase homelessness…

Lisa Nandy has been out on the media round this morning, promoting Labour’s proposed leasehold reform, and was forced to confront her own contradictory record on housebuilding. On Times Radio this morning, Stig Abell first presented Nandy with a fitting nickname, given her opposition to development in Manchester:

“STUDIO: So you’re going to be called Lisa NIMBY here, aren’t you? Because you had a chance not to be a NIMBY, and you were a NIMBY?

LN: Wow. How long did it take you to come up with that one?

STUDIO: It sounds a bit like Nandy.

LN: Yeah, well done.”

It shouldn’t have taken Stig long to come up with Nandy’s nickname, given Guido used it three weeks ago…

Lisa then launched a defence of her confused position. Whilst claiming the need for housing was “obvious” she defended her decision to block building – when she explicitly called for Wigan’s planned housing stock to be reduced. She then deployed all the usual NIMBY buzzwords, praising the “beautiful area of natural beauty… well used and loved by local people” with “lots of wildlife“. What she doesn’t mention is that that in her letter opposing the development, she explicitly opposed building on the Green Belt – not just for this project. Today, Nandy says she wants to build on the Green Belt, she previously spelt out that “It is wrong to consider Green Belt land for development” …

NIMBY Nandy’s building bewilderment didn’t end there. She claimed to be “on the side of the builders” whilst at the same time wanting “local authorities and combined authorities across the country to have a much bigger role”. In her Times Red Box piece today, she also called for involving communities “at the start” of planning applications – which sounds awfully similar to the government’s own policy. Once again, Labour’s housing policy is full of contradictions.