Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner made a huge gaffe on Sky News (Image: Sky News)
If you ever needed a case study of an archetypal car crash interview then Angela Rayner’s gaffe this weekend was everything you could ever ask for.
The Deputy PM’s appearance on Sky News was surely the kind of nightmare that will have her coming out in a cold sweat whenever she thinks about it. Shudder!
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For those who didn’t catch the exchange which has, naturally, now gone viral, Ange - who is also the Secretary of State for Housing - was being grilled by Trevor Phillips on the Government's plan to end the housing crisis by building 1.5 million new homes.
He asked her how many of those will be filled by the 2.5 million immigrants Labour claims will arrive in the UK over the same period.
A perfectly predictable question. Given the policy is now one of Labour’s very top priorities - after they effectively last week binned off focusing on bringing migration down - it's a question you’d damn well hope she had an answer for.
Nope!
Ms Rayner said: "There is plenty of housing already, but there's not enough for the people that desperately need it."
Pointing out the obvious Phillips was quick on the uptake, saying no part of her retort made any sense whatsoever.
READ MORE: 'Keir Starmer's hit the panic button and his big plan is a total embarrassment'
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Angela Rayner says there’s ‘plenty of housing’
He said: "You start the interview by telling me that there is a housing crisis and when I remind you that you have said as a government that we are going to have 2.5 million migrants, suddenly there is a lot of housing. Where are these people going to go?"
Gah! What a horrible hell hole to be in! In one foolish sentence Ms Rayner effectively kiboshed the argument underpinning Labour’s now centre-piece bit of policy to build, build, build.
It quickly got worse as she sidestepped to safer ground saying that "far too many people are waiting on council housing lists" (despite the abundance of homes that she says the UK has).
The truth is that the whole plan was problematic from the get go and all this proved was that Rayner has simply been pushed centre stage to repeat the "let’s build 1.5m homes" mantra without really understanding the intricacies.
I know that actually there are lots of prominent Tories who have also advocated for the building of millions of new homes so I understand that the issue is more complex than Labour versus the Tories.
My personal view is that owning your own home is the cornerstone of Conservativism - and the fact that many now don’t achieve this until their mid 40s, if at all, is terrible for both the UK and its people.
But is the answer to this endless soulless new builds being plonked on every spare field in Britain? Angela Rayner and the Labour party’s approach to this is all wrong.
Labour's plan to build 1.5m homes hasn't been properly thought out, says Mieka Smiles (Image: Getty)
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I’m happy to be called a NIMBY if it means advocating for proper infrastructure before cementing over the countryside. If there’s going to be new houses everywhere please let it be with the right roads, schools, shops and health services.
I think the other trick missing in Rayner’s vision is, like she herself alluded to, the existing housing stock. I live in a town where there are plenty of boarded up and abandoned properties that desperately need investment to bring them back into use from often inactive investors who sit on them for years.
Add to this the sad and increasing abundance of empty town and city centre retail and office units that, with a bit of love, could be turned into fantastic homes for those who don’t need huge houses with gardens - perhaps as starter properties or for retirees.
In turn this approach could increase footfall in struggling high streets.
And finally, of course, it's back to the original question that Angela fluffed: we need to urgently sort out immigration.
Middlesbrough has some of the cheapest housing in the country and many town centre properties are used for asylum seekers.
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Once their applications are given approval, however, many then move on to bigger cities, which leads to less settled communities and more problems.
This would be the case in any area with a high turnover of occupants, whatever their background. Sorting out this revolving door in the town could also help those after cheaper properties to take that first step onto the property ladder.
As for Ange? Well my advice to her is to gen up on her own policy before allowing yourself to be ridiculed again. For all of our sakes.