I agree with Angela Rayner. Right to Buy must go

 Thatcher’s policy did not result in cultural transformation, but statutorily mandated unfairness

Daily Telegraph 04/10/26

Giving council tenants the right to buy their own council house was one of Margaret Thatcher’s great reforms. The Housing Act of 1980 gave millions the opportunity to own their own home for the first time. Even more significantly, it marked a significant unpicking of the post-1945 Clement Attlee settlement, the collectivist consensus that by 1979 had laid Britain low.

Now Andy Burnham’s Government is dismantling Right to Buy. In his Labour Party conference speech last week, the Prime Minister announced an expansion of council house building and his intention to “reform Right to Buy. Not taking the right away from anyone in an existing home. But removing it from the new homes we build so they are there for generations to come”.

This may well be a step towards its complete removal for all new social tenants in new-builds or otherwise.

This comes on top of what has already been done to dilute it during Keir Starmer’s government. Angela Rayner, before her own housing imbroglio ended her previous stint as Housing Secretary, had cut the reduction available to council tenants on buying their homes. In London the maximum discount was reduced from £136,400 to just £16,000. The move was widely seen as especially hypocritical given Rayner had bought her own council house.

It is natural for those on the Right to take umbrage against the Burnham/Rayner plan. Right to Buy was a central Thatcherite tenet and ending it is explicitly part of the Burnham attempt to uproot Thatcherism and go back to a world of cradle-to-grave state provision. 

The move is symbolic as much as it is policy-oriented. I hate its symbolism, but must agree with Ms Rayner that Right to Buy makes little sense today. Indeed, it has become a form of statutorily mandated unfairness.

Council house sales in the 1980s were an integral part of Thatcher’s project to reshape our country and fundamentally alter the national psyche – and the steep discouThatcher believed that by spreading the benefits of homeownership – and later the country’s assets via the privatisation programme and extolling the virtues of mass share ownership – Britain would become an entrepreneurial society. It would transform over time from a country where bosses and workers saw themselves as antagonistic forces in permanent conflict to one where all strived for affluence. Britain would become a proprietorial society which would have no truck with socialism.

The Thatcher interregnum transformed Britain for the better. We have lived off its successes ever since, with its beneficial legacy only now fizzling out. This is something that Burnham and the Left are celebrating, and Telegraph readers should rightly mourn.

But this does not alter the fact, as we can all see, that while Thatcherism succeeded in much, it simply failed in its long-term cultural mission. It did not permanently transform Britain from a social democratic to an entrepreneurial society. Britain remains more European than American – at least in its attitudes to wealth and aspiration. One only needs to look at how popular calls to tax the rich remain among many voters.

If Right to Buy has not achieved a cultural transformation, the only case for it can be its practical impact. And here, too, the policy is wanting. It is madness for the state to pay to build new social housing while it is being forced to sell off its stock at the same time – and at a discount.

Council housing is institutionally unfair. The average monthly rent on social housing in London is around £550 while in the private sector it is more than £2,300. How can this be justified? People can be living literally next door to each other in near-identical flats and one tenant could be paying four or more times as much as their neighbour. Striving professionals doing their very best to save up enough for the deposit on buying a home will naturally feel aggrieved – and rightly so.

And this injustice is only exacerbated when council houses are sold at a discount. Those who are not lucky enough to have a council tenancy don’t get this taxpayer-funded subsidy. No, instead they are hit by ever-rising rates of stamp duty.

It is time for the Right to move beyond its understandable romantic attachment to all things Thatcherite. Some of the great lady’s policies did not succeed and others are past their time. We should accept that – and be willing to say, yes, it is possible for Ms Rayner to be right.nts offered to social tenants on their properties was an integral part of the plan. Only this would ensure the changes would happen at a grand enough scale to make a national difference.