The right to buy or the right to a home? The English housing conundrum

One of the defining policies of the Thatcher government (1979–1990) and the neoliberal turn in Britain was the ‘Right to Buy’ programme for social housing, through which over 2.8 million houses were sold, with very few subsequently replaced. The Right to Buy, alongside other measures, led to the collapse of the expansive local authority housebuilding programme of the post-war period. Today, the UK faces a profound housing crisis. The Right to Buy—already abolished in Scotland and Wales—continues to limit local authorities’ capacity to develop social housing, as demonstrated through two examples of English, Labour-run councils working against the grain of neoliberal policy. At a national level, Right to Buy now faces reform by the Labour government, which aims to reduce the material limits on social housing imposed by the Right to Buy without challenging the policy's ideological role in cohering a bloc of interests in the ‘property-owning democracy’.