Looks like it. Left wing parties that dislike each other joined with centre right to keep out Le Pen. But it leaves France a basket case, probably unable to form a government. Melenchon, who is as Eurosceptic as Le Pen, is not popular with other left wing parties. Macron is emasculated and is likely to lose his PM. For me, one of the losers here is Yvette Cooper. Labour have no plan to deal with the dinghies. Le Pen would have started to clear out the economic migrants from France, improving the position for UK.
I take it from that that she lost. Hopefully climate change will end grass tennis soon. Oooh come on Tim.
Have we not done this before? Eurosceptic leader elected in Country X, EU will crumble any day now etc etc. yet nobody is rushing to replicate our success.
Great banter from Reform to just make up candidates to contest constituencies where they knew they could only take a chunk out of the Tory vote. Fantastic work Sir Nigel.
Burnside @BurnsideNotTosh Follow There have been reports of masses of dinghies leaving the French coast bound for England, early reports are they are full of French people.
Great excitement as Rishi unveils his shadow cabinet. But we all know that the real opposition is Reform and I can’t wait to see how the owner of the party, Farage, divides up the portfolios between Anderson, Tice, Lowe and the other one none of them have actually met.
113,000 homeless families and single adults in temporary accommodation. 261,000 unused properties. Compulsory purchasing seen as ‘draconian’ move. Not as draconian as confiscation though. Sort yourselves out property owners.
Lots of NIMBY murmuring already over Labour's plan for 1.5m new houses. I'm confused though about the new government's mandatory housing targets for local authorities. Presumably these are targets for councils to allow/encourage house building by private developers rather than for councils to build their own social housing, which should be another priority. This would necessitate scrapping of 'right to buy'.
My understanding is that the government will not spend any taxpayers money on building new homes, or give local government to cash to do this for social housing. So it’s all private developer driven. To be fair they have the cash and in many cases the land to build on but are held in check by bureaucracy, appeals etc. perhaps more housing association development will be encouraged and/or the ration between social housing and private sale builds on new developments changed. Meanwhile 261,000 homes sit empty and unfurnished for at least six months. Not second homes, not short term/airbnb lets, just empty.
Yes, these should face compulsory purchase orders. Another thing which could be utilised is the vast amount of empty office space in our cities. London is estimated to have 31m square feet of empty office space - the equivalent of 60 Gherkins - and much of this could and should be used for housing. The working from home culture which stemmed from lock-down should be encouraged and extended, freeing up even more space which could be utilised.
