Weekly news - Labour rent policy

Visiting my parents in Cornwall over the Bank Holiday weekend, we passed the village of St. Just where a recent affordable housing scheme has given rise to 36 new houses for purchase or rent. In proportional terms this is a sizeable increase in property for the area, yet begs the question as to what exactly these new inhabitants are supposed to do with themselves regarding sustainable employment once they arrive? The village pasty shop will not provide work for them all.

And yet, affordable housing schemes in areas of the country in which might more realistically be inclined to live and work are at an absymally low level. Ed Miliband this week unveiled Labour's policy plans for trying to tackle the woes of 'Generation Rent', which has seen a 13% rise in average cost of rent since 2010. His proposals stipulate a ban on landlords imposing more than one rent rise a year; a ceiling cap on those rises in line with inflation and/or market rates; the installing of 3-year tenancy agreements; and scrapping letting agency fees.

At surface level, these look like commendable ambitions yet, like his energy price policy, smacks of a child dipping his toe in the sea and scampering away as the waves chase him up the beach. It's a welcome start but self-confidence will need to develop before wading out any deeper where he's more likely to be knocked down.

Any punitive aims to restrict landlords will undoubtedly be circumvented and costs routed back to tenants. Instead, far more council properties should be built, as Simon Jenkins on 'Question Time' said, by renovating and fully utilising existing inner-city properties lying either derelict or empty, rather than spreading out still further onto greenfield land.

In London, instead of this deranged hoisting up of 'luxury apartment' high rises like halberds across the city battlefield, developers need to be incentivised to provide property that the average person trying to live and work in London might actually be able to afford. (This week I became aware of a reality show on Channel 4 'How to get a council house', which I assumed, until I was informed otherwise, would be the latest morality plunge-pool whereby desperate applicants regale their sob story before being put before the public vote to determine the lucky winner of a council house in Tower Hamlets.)

As a fully-fledged member of 'Generation Rent', I welcome any political shuffling towards at least trying to address the worsening problems. At the same time however, I cannot help but feel that the primary aspiration of our parents and grandparents to own property as a central driver of social mobility has, for many, already fallen from the branches of reality. An incremental shift to the continental Europe mode of renting and parental cohabitation would appear to be the only realistic progression, not only economically, but for the engrained psychological expectations of the younger generations.

The instant hyperbole and scorn poured out by the Conservatives, trying to douse Miliband's latest announcement, is indicative of just how redundant any hope of a serious debate on the issue has become. The idea of any rent caps is 'Venezuelan' whilst the notion of freezing energy prices of 'Marxist'; as though everyone should bray in mindless agreement with the derogatory deployment of both these labels.

It is this moribund level of debate that contaminates politics and encourages apathy. In the same way as the current cross-party demolition squad zeroing-in on Nigel Farage and UKIP. It may be open season on UKIP - with one 'fruitcake' after another popping up to be whacked down like a prejudiced mole - but the juvenile efforts being made by left wing fringe groups and the mainstream media to try and discredit them by force can only strengthen the stubborn resolve of the rising numbers of those who find empathy with their policies.