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…
Labour MP Lucy Powell explains the reality of the situation…
“The traditional Left/Right analysis misses electoral challenge as it is now. Former Labour voters in so-called Red Wall seats are economically relatively “left”. They want decent jobs, investment, pride in town centres, better housing. Today’s Tories are offering more of that.”
As Labour continue to accuse the Tories of cronyism over this morning’s Dyson texting story, shadow business minister Lucy Powell conceded on Politics Live that, had Starmer been in Boris’s shoes, he probably would’ve done exactly the same as the Prime Minister:
“Well look, I think you’ve got to separate out some of these issues here, of course you would expect a Prime Minister in that time of crisis to do whatever it takes to encourage and support British industry, to help meet the demand of the time, whether it be ventilators, PPE, or hand sanitisers or feeding hungry school children and so on…”
Asked whether she agreed with Jo Coburn’s summary of her position – that she believes Keir Starmer “would have done the same, whatever it takes” – Powell replied “Ok”.
The general post-PMQs press consensus seemed to be Labour is misjudging weaponising this story. It looks like Powell agrees too…
Guido’s sure readers will be relieved to hear Labour has come out against a policy that never had any chance of materialising; Saturday’s Telegraph splashed that pubs may re-open in April, though without alcohol. Senior government sources immediately dismissed the harebrained suggestion, telling Guido “We are not going to open pubs that can’t sell booze. What would be the point of that?”.
Three days later and Labour has also come out against the dead-in-the-water policy, with Lucy Powell saying the idea was “nonsense” and “ridiculous”:
Labour’s research and briefing department is very sloppy these days…
