Kemi Badenoch used her first address in the Commons to Housing Secretary Angela Rayner to rip into her fragile position, claiming she had been “stitched up” by Starmer as the “fall guy” for Labour’s inevitable failure on their housing plans. Kemi didn’t pull any punches:

“These plans have not been written by her but by the Chancellor and the Chancellor’s advisers…[they’ve] made promises that are not deliverable and they’ve hung them around her neck and said Angie, you go out there and you sell it.”

Kemi also took the opportunity to slam the Labour nepo-babies:

“I’m sad to see many of her Shadow team not sitting beside her as ministers. They worked for free grinding in opposition for years, only to watch the children of the chosen ones get the ministerial cars and salaries before their Maiden speeches are written. Wow.”

Meanwhile, there’ve been reports that Angie’s allies fear she’s being “frozen out” on key policy areas, with the Labour top team sidelining her from any responsibilities. Some very obvious positioning from Kemi…

Though Sadiq Khan clinched a third term as London Mayor in March, his spin on his ‘achievements’ didn’t go un-noticed by co-conspirators. Khan often claimed that he has “delivered” 25,000 affordable homes “in the last year alone”. Guido pointed out at the time that Khan had only built an abysmal 4% of the GLA target for affordable housing starts in the last three quarters. Now the UK Statistics Authority has called him out too…

Assembly Member Shaun Bailey wrote to UKSA about Khan’s “misleading” comments in articles of his record in building affordable houses. The Statistics Authority wrote back, confirming Khan was misinforming the public:

“There were 25,658 affordable housing starts in the period April 2022 to March 2023, and 13,954 affordable housing completions during this time. The Mayor’s use of the word ‘delivered’ could be misinterpreted by the average person to mean the housing had been completed rather than started.”

For someone who frequently blasts his rivals for spreading “misinformation”, Khan certainly seems no stranger to doing just that…

Sadiq Khan spent much of his re-election campaign bragging about housing, claiming variously that “more council homes are now being built than at any time since the 1970s” and that housebuilding is at its highest level in 100 years. He proudly boasted:

“There’s more to do, but on my watch overall housebuilding in London has reached levels not seen since the 1930s, with a record-breaking 25,000 genuinely affordable homes delivered in the last year alone.”

According to the GLA’s official quarterly housing statistics, released today, that’s not even close to the actual figure. In reality, the total number of affordable completions was only 10,949. Less than half…

GLA-supported affordable housing starts were only 2,358 out of a measly 3,244 total. As Robert Colvile points out, that happens to be the lowest in the GLA’s records, which start in 2008. “I’m proud of the lowest housebuilding since records began” isn’t quite as catchy…

UPDATE: Khan’s spokesman gets in touch to say “The 25,000 genuinely affordable council homes statistics refer to the published affordable housing stats for the year 22/23.” Again, there were only 13,954 completions that year, and a lower 10,949 this year. Khan regards a start as “delivering” a home, even if it is set to be built in 50 years time. Council house building has also reduced since 2022. Previous mayors have built housing through associations, not councils – rendering the statistics meaningless anyway.

As Gove’s renter control bill flounders in the Commons, opposition is mounting to socialist policies in Scotland. Tthe Scottish Government has just published the response to the consultation for its “New Deal for Tenants“, which seeks to extend rent controls, primarily by preventing rents being adjusted in-between tenancies. That’s after Sturgeon’s disastrous 2022 rent freeze and subsequent cap began obliterating the housing market…

ScotGov’s own survey of the sector shows the SNP’s policies have gone down like a cup of cold sick. They admit “the considerable majority of those commenting on rent controls clearly noted their opposition to the proposals” because, as was always obvious, the law will lead to “private landlords choosing to leave the sector and to shortages exacerbating rent inflation“. As comprehensively proved in Berlin and Ireland…

The vast majority of responses attack rent controls in particular. The Scottish Government then goes on to complain of the “relatively high proportion of respondents taking a landlord perspective“, despite the actual number of landlords being less than half. There are already 22,000 fewer homes available to rent in Scotland than only a year ago thanks to SNP policies – a whopping 6.4% of properties have been withdrawn from the market. This is the socialist housing nightmare that Sadiq Khan keeps begging to impose on London…

A series of Treasury briefings over the past few weeks paints a picture of a budget that looks very much like it’s designed to whack wealth – a surprising budget in this respect from fiscal hawks and multimillionaires Sunak and Hunt. Tory donors will be coughing on their cornflakes as non-dom status is abolished (a straight Labour policy) – confirmed in a briefing to the FT this morning. Has CCHQ checked how many are non-doms?

Government insiders are asking: is the move prompted by Sunak’s embarrassment at his own family finances ahead of a rough campaign? Far from defusing an electoral issue, will only raise the issue up the agenda for Labour to exploit…

There are severe measures – pushed by team Gove – coming to punish the owners of short term holiday lets – Oxford Economics says short term lets contributed more than £27.7 billion to the UK economy and support more than 50,000 jobs. Business class flight taxes will also be hiked. Don’t mention the fact the taxpayer funded £600,000 of these flights for ministers in the past six months…

Far from outflanking Labour in a genius judo move, Tory MPs and wonks fear these moves will simply shift the conversation onto Labour’s ground. Labour will be delighted with a Budget they can claim is at least partly what they would do – only that they would go further. All while making the point that the Tories have sustained these policies for more than a decade before today’s change of heart. Hunt has previously compared himself to Nigel Lawson – no one believes that now…

At last night’s Next Gen Tories event in a crowded Morpeth Arms Robert Jenrick, still sporting his “Caesar” haircut,  set out his stall for the future of the Tories, arguing that housing is the golden ticket – “which I’ve probably done more on, to my cost, than anybody in Parliament“.  Jenrick explained that “the polling is terrible among young people” and “there is a fatalistic attitude in our party today“, while his recent trips to Europe and Texas have proved that right-wing parties can do well with young people. He quipped that Sunak said: “If we get flights off the ground to Rwanda, you’ll be on the first one there”…

Jenrick said that the Tories’ failure to execute zonal planning reform in 2021 was “one of the greatest missed opportunities of this parliament… Boris himself would accept that.” As a result, the government’s continued failure to deliver the pledge “locked our country in a cycle of slow growth”. Meanwhile, negative growth is now kiboshing Sunak’s electoral plans…

When a co-conspirator asked Jenrick about Guido’s story on vital leasehold reform, he agreed that Parliament must “consign leasehold to the history books” as a “historic feudal system” with no place in modern Britain – and set an end date in stone. Jenrick and Gove should get together to push through that “unfinished Conservative revolution”…