Home to Roost

Having more or less solved the NHS by driving out the doctors, the Government is happily plunging feet-first into the housing crisis. Homelessness has doubled on the Bullingdons' watch; although ascribing this fact to anything so crude and materialistic as the vandalism of the social security safety net, the donation of state housing to private landlords or the imbalance between wages and rents would, of course, constitute an inexcusable blasphemy against the True Faith. Accordingly, ministers are now considering how best to outsource the blame and, as usual, have decided that local authorities make the most efficient scapegoats. A new "duty of prevention" is being considered for imposition, whereby councils would be required to provide the Government's idea of practical help for anyone at risk of being made homeless; those who are homeless already will just have to live with their lifestyle choice. Going by the Government's idea of practical help for the unemployed, the local authorities' obligations will stretch to little more than pep talks, threats and arbitrary bureaucratic punishments. Nevertheless, at least two London councils have already suggested that the measures will prove insufficiently tough unless accompanied by extensive powers of social cleansing and deportation; something ministers find unpalatable owing to the possibility that marauding swarms of internal migrants may suddenly turn up in their nice, clean constituencies.