A blogger who shall remain nameless wrote on my Facebook wall on the day that my partner and I bought our new apartment: “Congratulations on joining the grasping classes! Pah.”

Ouch. Over the last few months, the significance of this comment has started to sink in. On Friday for instance I was at a friend’s birthday dinner party. As my friends dribbled in, I was asked four separate times how selling the apartment was going. Each time this resulted in me reflexively talking about the housing market, negative equity, tax, estate agents, the whole kaboodle. And each time I realised that it was stuff I was genuinely concerned about. On the fourth occasion it suddenly hit me like a bolt from the blue: I am now officially that bore at dinner parties I used to avoid who wanted to talk about house prices. My friends are now officially those boring people who actually initiate conversations about house prices.

And the worst thing is, we don’t even live in the fucking apartment! There’s nothing wrong with it, only that it is a one bedroom affair and there are two of us. We own it because my partner put a deposit down on a new flat that hadn’t yet been built during our first month of going out together, way back in 2005 when the housing market was still buoyant and it didn’t seem like much of a risk. Then one month before exchanging contracts in the summer of 2006, the fucking thing burned down (coincidentally, Lord Levy - whose own offices burned down a few months before in mysterious circumstances - was helping police with their inquiries in Colindale Police Station next door to the apartment building). We didn’t actually get to buy the thing - and we stood to lose a big deposit if we didn’t - until January this year. As you will no doubt be aware, since then the housing market has been, well, not great.

So I now pay more attention to news reports about house prices and the Bank of England than I ever have done before. A quarter of a percentage point can now raise or lower my spirits of a morning. I get palpitations each time I look at my bank account online and see a big red six figure sum glaring at me.

The simple fact is, we aren’t really doing that badly. The advantage of buying property at 2005 prices is that even with house prices wobbling at the moment we are unlikely to actually lose money (although making money is looking like it would take a minor miracle at the moment). And let’s face it, we have privileged enough backgrounds to be able to put up with the inconvenience and the anxiety for a few months. I’m acutely aware that there are people for whom the state of the housing market has a tangible effect on their quality of life. Far from becoming inured to the way our whole economy is underpinned by property prices, becoming a property owner has just made me realised what a crock it really is. At least I’m getting to see its full awfulness before in a few years time I become at one with my class and start working the system to my full advantage.

(the saddest thing is I just went back through this article and changed the word “flat” into “apartment” - I’ve become the most pathetic wanker ever)

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A few days late on this one, but I have been meaning to follow up on this article about Grant Shapp’s cunning stunt over the Christmas holidays:

“Our plan would build more houses than the Government. But the way to do it is not to do it in a centrally planned way. That has always failed.

“The way to do it is to incentivise communities to want to build houses. It works by saying, ‘build these houses and you get a new town centre or other services like a hospital or school.’ The existing community gets the gain, not just those people who move there.

“If people knew that council tax receipts were kept for five or 10 years if they took houses and therefore council tax was lower, they would often be in favour. This way you are building up an array of benefits from being a Yimby, not a Nimby.”

No-one is disputing that if communities had incentives to develop, all things being equal they probably would. But perhaps Mr Shapps ought to buy himself a calculator if he intends to make this incentive reliant on council tax receipts. Because while only a fraction (a quarter to be precise) of local authority revenue is raised from council tax, new developments will continue to have net costs associated with them, not net benefits.

If the Tory policy is for council tax to shoulder a bigger burden of local tax revenue, it’s news to me, and I’m sure it will be news to the millions of people who are unlikely to welcome a massive tax hike to the tune of thousands of pounds. And it must be news to Caroline Spelman and Eric Pickles who have spent the past two-plus years denouncing any attempt of government to even contemplate revaluation by coming up with scare stories about taxing “nice views“.

If Shapps truly wants his dream of creating incentives for new build to become a reality, he’s going to have to be a bit more radical than that. It won’t happen without a significant tax shift onto land values. That isn’t something that David Cameron, Gideon Osborne and the other members of the Tufty Club behind the New Model Tories are likely to contemplate, no matter how many times Grant sleeps in a cardboard box.

Shapps of course must know this; he’s seen how Osborne has been inflated to the point of being hailed the new messiah by the Right for suggesting (modest) cuts in wealth taxes after all, which makes his stunt seem all the more hollow. Almost as hollow, in fact, as this claim:

Mr Shapps points out that the real losers were the Lib Dems whose second place was a foretaste of the disarray that eventually claimed their leader.

W-O-W - this is amazing stuff coming from the man who claimed he had proof that the Lib Dems were running a “poster lottery” (which has subsequently earned Iain Dale the immortal nickname Pravdale) and whose hands appeared to be caught stuck in the YouTube cookie jar. Cunning stunts indeed. Without wanting to revisit old battles, let’s just make one thing clear: just as the Lib Dem’s victory in Dunfermline and West Fife in 2006 had nothing to do with our lack of a leader at the time, winning Ealing Southall would have done nothing to save Menzies Campbell’s job. He would still have quit this autumn. For Shapps to claim that one of the greatest Tory fuckups of 2007 was in fact a bold act of regicide on his part is immodest even by his standards.

It’s nice to see him begin his political rehabilitation however. It is clear he has learned nothing, which suggests that we will have a second chance to have some more fun at the expense of this legend in his own lunchtime before too long.

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Coming in late I know, but I’m amazed no-one has referred to Grant Shapps’ homelessness escapade the other day in the context of being a cunning stunt. “Cunning stunt” is a collection of letters I have repeatedly associated with the brains behind the Tory’s Ealing Southall campaign this year, and it’s nice to have a reminder in this period of goodwill to all men.

Humbug.

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I thought I’d give Huhne’s manifesto the same treatment that I gave Clegg’s speech last week.

Once again, I’ll give each main section marks out of five for how much the section is in the party’s comfort zone, how much it is reaching out beyond our traditional supporter base and how much I personally agree with it. I realise the first two are tests which Nick Clegg first set, but they are valid ones.

Changing the system, not just the Government

Huhne starts off by talking about the electoral system, a matter close to Liberal Democrats’ hearts but not neccesarily the wider public. To be fair, it is the first matter of substance that Clegg referred to in his speech last week as well.

Not much I can add here. Obviously I agree with the policy. I’m not sure this is how I would articulate it, particularly if I had one eye on the wider public. I would want to emphasise the importance of choice and competition, not simply fairness.

Comfort rating: PR, nuff said. 5/5
Reaching out rating: he doesn’t mention “PR” explicitly, at least. 2/5
Personal rating: just to be picky, I’d have phrased it differently and find “fairness” a bit woolly. 4/5

Giving back power to people and communities

This is a radical vision of decentralisation which I think both the party and the public like the sound of. When Lib Dems talk of localism, we mean it, and this is a particularly well articulated section.

Comfort rating: localism is an easy sell internally. 5/5
Reaching out rating: well trod turf, but it is a message which I think is resonating increasingly. 4/5
Personal rating: sounds good to me. 5/5

Fixed term parliaments

This section is actually about more than that. Rather, it is a summary of issues relating to Parliament. I think fixed term parliaments resonate more widely at the moment because of the phoney election debacle, but that is quickly fading. The stuff that is of wider interest I think is the stuff about gender balance in the Lords, not because it will set the world on fire but because I think it shows an interest in how the party looks, which is important.

Comfort rating: some might shuffle their feet about gender balance in the elected Lords. 3/5.
Reaching out rating: some stuff of interest, but mostly the public won’t care about this section. The gender balance stuff gets a point for its long term boost to the party’s image though. 3/5.
Personal rating: if this gender balance stuff is a combination of existing party practice (the “one third” rule), training and mentoring and pro-activity, then great. 4/5.

The people’s veto

Yay! A constitutional reform which is not only truly democratic but is likely to resonate with the average Sun reader. Personally, as readers may have gathered, I’d go further, but a veto system such as this would be a powerful tool and would ensure that all laws had the assent - passive or otherwise - of the people.

Huhne doesn’t mention treaties here (can you say “Lisbon”?), but surely he wouldn’t make them exempt?

Comfort rating: I suspect many people in the party may be uncomfortable about this, but this limited form of participatory democracy will probably win them round in the end. 3/5
Reaching out rating: The public would love this. 5/5
Personal rating: I’d go further, but this is great progress. 5/5

A Freedom Bill to give back liberties

A Freedom Bill? That sounds a bit like a Nick Clegg idea! And Clegg was right - it is indicative of quite how scared he is of his own shadow that he didn’t mention it in his launch.

Is it good politics? Well, it is a great way to communicate our values - symbolism with substance attached. On the other hand it risks having us presented as the middle class liberati. On balance though, I think the consistency would be its own reward and would find its own audience. Not everyone will agree, but significant numbers on both the left and right will.

Comfort rating: can’t see the party having an issue with it. 5/5
Reaching out rating: it will find its own audience. 3/5 (I nearly gave it a 4)
Personal rating: sounds great to me. 5/5

Stopping money politics

This section is all very well as far as it goes, but is a little light on detail. What, for example, does Huhne propose to do about party funding? In fairness to him, he was probably simply being responsible given the Hayden Phillips talks and was not in a position to write his manifesto on the basis that they would collapse the day before.

On corruption, this section is stronger. The Saudi issue is good politics for us and Vince Cable has played it very well this week (maybe we should keep him…).

Comfort rating: not many people vote for corruption. 5/5
Reaching out rating: doesn’t exactly set the world on fire, but there is at least sympathy for our position. 3/5
Personal rating: would want more detail on party funding, notwithstanding the practicalities. 3/5

Markets in public services, or local control?

This section is very interesting. In short it is an argument for localism and against marketisation of public services. In doing so, he actually goes further than I would, dismissing school vouchers for example which is a policy which I have some sympathy for.

He does at least articulate a clear case however. You can agree with him or not, but you can’t accuse him of mincing his words in the way that Clegg was doing last week. This is a line that Steve Webb would have no difficulty with and David Laws would hate, but at least it is a line. I’ve been arguing for consistency in our policy, and this is certainly consistent.

On the down side, is it an issue which will resonate with the public? I think they are for localism, but this section doesn’t address how we will deal with the inevitable complaints about “postcode lotteries” and the like. While the internal conflict is certainly over the extent to which economic liberalism and social liberalism should hold sway in the public services debate, I think the wider public have other priorities that this section does not address.

Comfort rating: it’s broadly existing party policy, but a lot of people will be uncomfortable about going down on one side to such an extent. 2/5
Reaching out rating: this isn’t the debate the public particularly cares about, but at least it is a clear policy. 2/5
Personal rating: I broadly go along with it, but I think there are different balances to strike in health and education policies. 4/5

Solving the housing crisis

This is one of the issues I took Clegg to task for not mentioning last week. I still maintain that you can’t be serious about addressing social mobility without saying something about housing. So, full marks to Huhne for addressing precisely that, and indirectly my other issue - intergenerational equity.

Once again, Huhne here gives us a well argued case for the limits and strengths of council housing. He isn’t being prescriptive here but shows a depth of knowledge. He sits on the fence here to a certain extent, but it is certainly true that it is largely an issue that should be decided locally.

I’m not sure he satisfactorily addresses how he intends us to build 3 million homes over 10 years. There is no easy answer of course (unless you propose bankrupting the state by insisting the government should build every last one of them), but a bit more detail here - and less detail on the public services section - would have been welcome.

Comfort zone: he doesn’t mention anything like building on greenbelt land. 5/5
Reaching out zone: to both the young and the working class, this is one of the biggest issues. He should have made it more central in my view, and linked it to other issues such as immigration, but the fact that he mentioned it at all puts him light years ahead of his opponent. 4/5
Personal rating: he doesn’t mention anything truly radical that might interest me such as contemplating some building on the greenbelt. 3/5

No to Trident

I’ve already banged on about this enough.

Comfort rating: plays well with a certain cleavage but seems to have already backfired to an extent. 3/5
Reaching out rating: I just don’t see many people joining the throng. 1/5
Personal rating: good policy, wrong politics. 3/5

Rebalancing our foreign policy

Again, Iraq War aside, I can’t help but think this will largely leave the average person in the street cold. We’ve acquired a good reputation with regards to foreign policy in the past, but most of the people who support us on this issue have already come over to us. There is some anti-American sentiment out there, but there’s more anti-European sentiment.

None of which is to say that there is much here I would take issue with, although I’m curious why it mentions the English-speaking Commonwealth and not just the Commonwealth; are there not ties there which if anything will grow in importance over the next few decades? He deserves points for bravery for even mentioning the Euro, and has a clear answer for why joining is an option but certainly not yet.

In terms of low politics, it is also interesting that he appears to position himself as broadly more Euro-sceptic than Clegg, who was rather fulsome in his praise for the EU.

Comfort rating: some feathers might be ruffled by being rude about the EU and mentioning the Euro, but nothing to get in a lather over. 4/5
Reaching out rating: very mild Euro-scepticism and anti-Americanism reaches out of a certain extent, but this won’t get them talking at the Dog and Duck. 2/5
Personal rating: broadly fine but uninspired. 4/5

Fairness: a core belief for social liberals

Here Huhne firmly nails his colours to the mast and outs himself as a social liberal. Good. We have a real contest now as Clegg is clearly on the economic wing.

There is a lot here I can’t imagine Clegg saying, based on his speech last week. If I had a rather larger ego than I do, I might even think that this section was tailor-made to get my attention:

It is not enough to speak of equality of opportunity, aspiration and level playing fields. If ‘meritocracy’ means that individuals will receive the rewards their abilities and work deserve, it produces a very unattractive society in which complacently successful people constantly look down on their less able fellow citizens, whom they firmly believe to deserve less. We need more than that.

In truth, I suspect this section has rather more to do with Duncan Brack than it has to do with me.

For me, this is the most important section in the whole document. It is about our core beliefs and reclaiming equality at a time when so many Lib Dems seem keen to drop it as a priority altogether. It is clarity such as this section that recharges my political batteries and convinces me there is actually a point.

Comfort rating: actually, I think that much of this will cause the wider party difficulty. This is a debate we haven’t had in years and it is time we did so. 2/5
Reaching out rating: Will this resonate in the posh suburbs of Kensington? No. Will it resonate in the down-at-heel streets of Manchester where I cut my political teeth? Absolutely. 4/5
Personal rating: I need to hear this sort of thing from my leader, not bloodless exhortations for ‘meritocracy’. 5/5

Tall poppies and tall stories

I believe this is the section which opponents of Huhne may wish to caricature as ‘hammering the rich’. He doesn’t use that phrase, but if I have a criticism it is that he does very little to disabuse people of that notion.

There is an important issue to address in terms of company directors awarding themselves outrageous pay bonuses, but we need to be careful to avoid appearing to play the politics of jealousy. The language here could be more balanced and emollient.

That says, the underlying theme - that we should be concerned more about taxing wealth than incomes - is one of my pet hobby horses. Huhne is cagey about land value taxation but is warm about it in principle. In all honesty, that’s as good as I’m likely to get in this election.

Comfort rating: perhaps a little too much emphasis on bashing high earners. 4/5
Reaching out rating: we need to think about how we might sell this. The stuff about high earners will resonate with a few, but not enough. 2/5
Personal rating: as good as I’m going to get. 4/5

Talking straight on crime

An impeccably liberal approach, but not one that is likely to dispel any caricatures about woolly liberals sadly. It isn’t woolly - it is well argued and succinct - but for many acknowledging home truths such as the fact that fear of crime in this country is disproportionate to the level of actual crime will lead to them simply dismissing the whole argument.

This section presents to me a dilemma. I don’t disagree with any of it, but I know it is a hard sell. Huhne doesn’t give us much of an idea of how he plans to sell all this either.

How do we get this balance right? I have to admit I think Clegg does it better. Sometimes it is just a matter of not saying certain things that don’t need to be said. We can’t afford to alienate people; we have to talk in a language they understand.

Comfort rating: will ruffle quite a few feathers actually - Lib Dems can be quite reactionary at times. 3/5
Reaching out rating: I’d love it if people listened to common sense on crime, but they broadly don’t. We need to communicate this better. 1/5
Personal rating: I can’t deny it doesn’t appeal to me personally. 5/5

Sustainability: challenging on the environment

There’s a lot here that doesn’t need to be said. You’ve already won the argument Chris. Once again though, he doesn’t address how we engage with the public on this issue in a language they understand. Clegg’s critique that when we talk about green taxes, most people just hear ‘taxes’ is correct. Huhne needs to address that point. Calling for further cuts in the basic rate of income tax does that to an extent, but it doesn’t address Clegg’s other point about people being able to see their sacrifices making a difference.

In this respect, I would actually argue that Huhne is currently weaker than Clegg on the environment. Not because he’s wrong on policy but that he is wrong on emphasis. The next battle is on selling this policy, not simply entrenching it. Huhne needs to engage with that fact.

Comfort rating: broadly established party policy. 5/5
Reaching out rating: communication counts. 1/5
Personal rating: fine as far as it goes but barely moves us forward from 2 years ago. 3/5

Our party can win

Thus far, and point me to where if I’m wrong, but Clegg has barely addressed the issue of party organisation. Huhne therefore deserves credit for including this section.

The emphasis on local party development is important as is the emphasis on diversity. His approach on mentoring and training is welcome.

His point about constitutional change being a prerequisite to partnership government is vital. It addresses the Oaten lament that coalition is an issue that the party hasn’t been talking about enough but doesn’t get us distracted in self-defeating speculation about horse-trading.

Finally, the final paragraph succinctly sums up what the party is about. This is a strong section.

Comfort rating: the party will find little to disagree with here. Making it happen though is another matter. 5/5
Reaching out rating: a strong, better trained and more diverse-looking party across the country would inevitably reach out to more people. Simple, but true. 4/5
Personal rating: Again, my concern is making it happen. An uncharitable 3/5 (because I’ve been here before).

TOTAL COMFORT RATING: 59/75
TOTAL REACHING OUT RATING: 41/75
TOTAL PERSONAL RATING: 60/75

You can’t compare like with like with these scores and Clegg’s in my earlier article. Overall, in my view there is more meat here for the general public to grapple with than was in Clegg’s speech last week. There is also more for the party faithful to potentially object to. Interestingly, although I really liked certain bits, as an overall package I found myself less comfortable with it than with Clegg.

Huhne is clearly taking risks, and he should be congratulated for that. He has brought substance to a debate which until now has been distinctly wanting for it. On a number of issues however, he simply doesn’t seem to appreciate the communication issue. On the environment, on crime and on taxation it isn’t that he is wrong on detail, but that he hasn’t worked enough on communicating the message. This is at least a much bigger concern of Nick Clegg’s.

But on consistency, he wins hands down. You can’t fault him for not being prepared to answer difficult questions. This is an issue my scoring system doesn’t measure, yet it is important. Developing a clear Liberal Democrat identity is crucial. It gives us a brand - not something that 100% of the population will agree with, but something which a substantial minority certainly will. Longer term, such consistency will help us bridge the gap between the 10% of the public who identify as a big-el-Lib big-dee-Dem and the 50% of the public who identify as a small-el-liberal. It is not something that Clegg has begun to grapple with thus far, nor can he if he is afraid to reach out beyond existing party policy.

On balance then, this is definitely a stronger package than what I’ve seen from Clegg so far. It is however a package for long term growth - to what extent that is a luxury we can currently afford is not something I have formed a firm view on yet. It certainly isn’t the killing blow that Huhne needs to deliver to defeat his rival. Perhaps I should wait however until Clegg produces a comparable document.

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Nick Clegg repeated his claim yesterday that under Ming the party was too inward-looking. To quote Elspeth Campbell: “I don’t know if you’re being helpful or not.”

I’ve already rebutted that argument and don’t intend to repeat myself. But I’m not blind to the fact is that by repeating this nonsense argument, Clegg is subtly contrasting himself with Chris Huhne and his stance on Trident. The subtext is that he’s the candidate that will concentrate on the issues that matter to the public, while Huhne would have the party revisiting old policies in an act of ideological purity.

And as I said yesterday, in that respect he’s right. Huhne’s Trident stance is, in my view, good policy but bad politics. This isn’t a debate the party should be having during this contest. It smacks of vanity, and at 11% in the polls, vanity is something we can ill afford.

If Huhne wants to talk about policy, he should concentrate on issues which have immediate relevance to large sections of the public. I’ve already mentioned two interrelated ones - housing and intergenerational equity - I’m sure he could come up with others. He should be concentrating his firepower on Clegg’s inability to make his own rhetoric match his detail, calling on the party to move out of its comfort zone and reach out while being apparently afraid of saying anything of substance along those lines in case it alienates a wing of the party.

Huhne’s advantage is that by going for the big tent approach, Clegg has compromised himself. In a large number of areas he will struggle to say anything at all that won’t alienate either David Laws or Steve Webb and their respective camps. He should be pressing that advantage home, not making Clegg’s points for him.

While at the start of this campaign I was guilty of a bit of policy arson myself by rubbishing our existing commitment to replace council tax with local income tax, even I wouldn’t expect either candidate to use this opportunity to set out detailed policy in that area. This is a good opportunity to signal areas that need revisiting, not to spell out solutions.

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The above title is also the name of Henry George’s greatest work (which I strongly recommend everyone on the planet to read). I mention this because, while the Lib Dems broadly voted the right way during their poverty debate yesterday afternoon (certainly in rejecting the option to support differential age rates for minimum wage), I couldn’t help but feel there was an enormous Georgist hole in the paper.

Why? Because despite what we managed to do today, you can’t divorce taxation from issues relating to poverty. One point I didn’t make this morning was that one of the other poor decisions the party made on its tax proposals yesterday was the decision to effectively kick our “long term goal” of removing people on incomes of less than £10,000 from income tax into even longer grass. This has been sacrificed in favour of a crowd pleasing commitment to cut income tax by 4p in the pound (entirely neutralised by an income tax hike due to the introduction of LIT). Just as Labour does, we will continue to force people on minimum wage to pay income tax - not only is this unfair to the individual, but it adds inflationary pressure onto the minimum wage (since one of the considerations is not unreasonably whether you can afford to live on it) and thus discourages employers to recruit in this country.

I supported the amendment to introduce flexible working for all employees (not that I had a vote…) but again, this adds to the costs of labour. If such policies are to be successful we must somehow relieve the pressure on employers in other ways, and that brings us back once again to personal allowance.

On the other hand, so much of this paper was concerned - rightly - with housing. Yet the focus seemed to be on targets and empowering local authorities to tackle the issue themselves (there is, come to think of it, a slight oxymoron there). I remain sceptical of the rose-tinted view that all of this can be achieved by fiddling with planning law and introducing Community Land Auctions: we need a more fundamental shift in approach.

Of course, LVT would have both enabled us to take the bottom bracket out of taxation, create greater incentives to build housing and dampen speculative investment in property. It’s no accident that George’s book, which develops the argument for authorities to collect economic rent, has as a starting point the need to attack poverty. It just seems that we are attempting to tackle this area with one arm tied behind our collective back. Worse, by scrapping residential property taxation in the form of Council Tax, in many ways we make it worse.

The Federal Policy Committee really need to throw us a bone here. At the very least, so as to demonstrate that our commitment to LVT is more than just “jam tomorrow” they should commission a review about how we might facilitate its introduction. Tony Vickers’ book Location Matters vividly spells out what a government would need to do to introduce the tax and it would certainly take a while. But if we aren’t prepared to even think about it until the start of a second term, then what we’re really promising is to not introduce the tax until the start of a third term. It’s no wonder that Georgists feel as if they are being paid lip service and nothing else.

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Mark Braund is remarkably generous about the Lib Dems on Comment is Free this morning, saying that “what makes the Lib Dem position on tax most interesting is their apparent willingness to discuss the far more radical idea of land value taxation (LVT).”

The truth is, this debate will be happening in the face of the Policy Committee and many members of the Party’s front bench. Last year’s Tax Commission report promised jam tomorrow, promising to revisit this issue. This year’s “Reducing the Burden” report makes almost no reference.

The debate within the party over LVT is often portrayed as an either/or deal between it and local income tax. Actually it is rather more complicated than that. Regardless of LVT, replacing Council Tax with a tax based on incomes will mean that we have no residential property tax. At a time when house prices are at an all time high, removing the one tax which is discouraging speculative investment - however slightly - is simply irresponsible. The Council Tax - Local Income Tax switch will lead to an average property price increase of £15,000. Great news if you already own a home; a slap in the face if you don’t. Worse, many people struggling to get on the property ladder will see their tax bill rise, while people sitting on enormous unearned wealth in the form of a house which has increased its value tenfold and more since they bought it, will be taken out of taxation altogether.

Party leaders like to claim that, regardless of the economic disbenefits, the policy is enormously popular. One of my less political friends naively put that to the test during the 2005 General Election by forwarding the party’s tax switch calculator website onto all his friends. He was shocked to find that almost all of them duly reported back that there was no way they were going to vote Lib Dem as they would have to pay more tax. When the party publishes figures to “prove” that most people would be better off, they like to cite pensioners and single income households. If the economic reality forces you to live with your parents or in an HMO, you are simply screwed.

Council Tax is a dreadful tax, but replacing it with LIT would be worse. You couldn’t replace CT with Site Value Rating (the local version of LVT) instantly, but you could make it fairer - as the Lyons Committee suggests - and begin work on replacing it with a progressive land value tax. What’s more, you could still have local income tax simply by localising 4p of income tax - that would have the added benefit of increasing the amount of taxation that local authorities collect from around 75% of their revenue to 50%, which would reduce the inflationary pressure we currently have on CT.

Longer term, we need to consider the benefits of a nationwide system of LVT. As Tony Vickers explains in his new book Location Matters, this would not only dampen speculative investment in property and make many more houses and derelict sites available on the market, but it can be used to invest in big infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and even be used to replace the Barnett formula. Much work would need to be done to introduce a pure system of LVT, but it could be done over the course of two parliaments. The Lib Dems’ vague promises on LVT, as they stand, aren’t a promise to do anything at all.

Hopefully the debate this morning will go the right way and the Local Income Tax obsessives will be thwarted to at least some extent. But either way, the party’s policy committee really needs to start taking a serious look at this and evaluate policy on the basis of what is best for the country rather than the short term (and highly debateable) political gains of introducing such economically irresponsible policies.

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Lest I be accused of denigrating Jon Cruddas, it has to be said that he has emerged as one of the true victors of the Labour deputy leadership contest. To come third, even if not within the membership college, was a real achievement for a candidate who has never had ministerial experience.

Reading Brown’s speech, he has won at least two other victories: firstly, he has got the Labour Party - and everyone else - talking about housing again. For me this is one of the most important issues that must be tackled over the next few years, and a crucial tool in the battle for intergenerational equity and against the extreme right. Of course, the fact that the Housing Minister since before the stone age happens to be married to Gordon Brown’s representative on Earth does suggest that she is not about to be sacked for failing to make progress on this issue, but we can at least hope she will be moved sideways.

Secondly, his pledge to not accept a ministerial post if elected has resulted in Brown pledging that the new deputy leader will do precisely that, making it analagous to the Lib Dems’ Federal President.

I don’t agree with Cruddas on everything, and certainly some of his statements such as his support for raising the basic rate of income tax were too much in Labour’s comfort zone, but the fact that he has done so well in pushing the party’s internal debate forward is to be congratulated by all of us who believe that politics ought to be more about ideas and less about personality.

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Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I have a particular interest in land value taxation, and housing and land reform more generally. I’m little more than an enthusiastic amateur however at the end of the day, and will happily admit to gaps in my knowledge. I have to admit for example that I didn’t know that the party had policy on Community Land Auctions for instance, least of all how they work.

Now I’ve had them explained to me, privately, via Jock Coats and via Tim Leunig’s CentreForum pamphlet on the subject, I think the idea sounds very interesting. It’s a way of attempting to square the circle whereby local authorities are wary of allowing urban sprawl and landowners are wary of selling their land cheap. The ideal solution gives them both an interest, and Community Land Auctions do appear to do this. The fact that vested interests such as the Country Land and Business Association don’t like it should surprise no-one. The fact that Tories rush to the defence of landowners should surprise people with any historical knowledge even less.

So far, so good. The problem is, the party’s press launch today of the policy left anyone attempting to defend the policy completely naked. Aside from poorly (wrongly even) explaining the actual policy, the press release that went out does nothing to inform the reader that it is existing policy or point to where it is explained in more detail. Even now the full speech still hasn’t been published anywhere online. Someone like me should have spent a part of Thursday defending the policy against all-comers. Instead, I was left straggling. At least I didn’t leap to the wrong conclusion and start slagging it off, but still.

In a nutshell, if the party’s press team isn’t prepared to do the spadework in preparation for a policy launch, it shouldn’t bother. We can’t complain about the quality of our press coverage, and then leave the party leader stranded out there in the way that he was. If you look at the CentreForum link above, you will find favourable quotes from Kate Barker, an Oxford economics professor, a Conservative Peer (for fuck’s sake) and the Town and Country Planning Association. Not one of these was mentioned in the press release. If the press monkeys can’t even be bothered to do that level of research, we might as well all give up and go home now.

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Having read Polly Toynbee’s spiteful article attacking the Lib Dems and Tories for opposing Home Information Packs, I took no small amount of pleasure to find Ruth Kelly capitulating and putting the scheme back.

What annoyed me most about Toynbee’s article was that it stuck religiously to the rote of “something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done”. In short, if you oppose HIPs, you oppose tackling climate change. The truth is though, while the energy reports are a step in the right direction, they will only scratch the surface in terms of promoting the energy efficiency of homes.

Unreported by Polly, Chris Huhne and Andrew Stunell have published their own details proposals for what to do about greening the existing housing stock (pdf). If she thinks these are terrible plans, she should say so. Instead she has simply attacked them for failing to back the government’s woefully inadequate proposals. Whatever you might have thought about her in the past, she used to be an independent thinker: now she’s become a polemical government speak-your-weight machine. It’s sad.

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