Max Mosley
1.8K posts

Max Mosley
@_maxmosley
Senior Economist at @NEF and Councillor for Brentford East | Growth, housing and labour markets




This is for the people who do the work. The nurses doing double shifts. The teachers who stay late. The plumbers, the carers, the small builders, the people running shops. The graduates trying to build a life. The founders who chose to build something here. Britain has stopped being a country that backs them. Over 40 years of political choices Britain has built an economy where owning things pays better than building them. Holding scarce land. Holding protected market positions. Holding the right credentials. Holding the right postcode. Gaming process. Capturing public money meant for someone else. These have become safer routes to reward than working, investing, teaching, caring, manufacturing or taking productive risk. This isn't a conspiracy. It's the predictable result of a state that has lost the ability to build, decide, enforce and shape markets in the public interest. The planning system rations land. The energy system rations power. Capital fails to scale British firms. Regulation protects incumbents and crushes challengers. Tax falls hard on work and lightly on position. Government compensates people for the costs this creates. But in rationed markets, that compensation is often captured by the same scarcity that made it necessary. Public money flows through broken systems and strengthens the very interests that broke them. Fiscal space shrinks. The state becomes more cautious, less capable, more dependent on the processes that created the failure. The loop tightens. An Honest Day is a new economic settlement for Britain. The shift required is from a distributive state to a capable one. Support people now. Reform the scarcity that makes support necessary. Reward action, not position. Read it now labourgrowth.co.uk



What if the residents of a street could collectively decide to build more homes on it - and share directly in the benefits? That's street votes. In our new paper with @LabourTogether we set out how community-led street votes could help @SteveReedMP build 1.5 million new homes. labourtogether.uk/all-reports/st… Street votes let neighbours come together, work with an architect, agree a new plan for their street, and vote. If they say yes, building happens with their consent, on their terms, with benefits flowing to the people who already live there. Building in towns and cities is vital - it adds much-needed homes where people want to live, it’s more sustainable and it grows a more resilient local economy. But building in cities and towns is difficult. Under street votes, instead of builders, councils, and residents fighting each other, the community can push for more homes themselves. And because ordinary people are driving the change on small sites, new homes can be built faster than the big schemes relying on big developers. Street votes learn from international schemes that have delivered tens of thousands of homes a year in cities like Seoul and Tel Aviv. Applied here, the evidence suggests up to 30,000 new homes a year in the places we need them most - with the first homes delivered before the end of this Parliament. Much of the work has already been done to put communities in the driver’s seat with street votes. MHCLG just needs to implement the rules. In this paper, @1jamesHowat, @KaneEmerson & @dc_lawrence set out the final steps that the Government should take to build thousands of new homes with popular support.









