The Daily Telegraph - 01.08.2019

(C. Jardin) #1

16 ***^ Thursday 1 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph


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N


ever one to waste a crisis, Sinn
Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald
is calling on the government in
Dublin to appoint a minister tasked
with getting ready for Irish unity. For
those with long memories, there are
echoes of the Liberal leader, David
Steel, telling his party conference in
1981 to “go back to your constituencies
and prepare for government”.
McDonald’s confidence is similarly
premature, but then, she surely
knows that. It’s about exploiting local
dissatisfaction with Brexit in order to
gee up the ranks on the longer-than-
expected march to the promised land.
That’s why she is also demanding
that an immediate vote on Irish
unification be triggered in the event of

the UK leaving the EU without a deal
on October 31, with all the authority
that only a woman from a fringe
party with a handful of seats that it
doesn’t even take at Westminster can
muster. Sinn Fein is now purporting to
simultaneously believe that Brexit will
lead to a united Ireland and that Brexit
should be stopped, which is a curious
position for an Irish republican to
adopt, to say the least.
There is an identifiable pathway
to a united Ireland in the event of a
hard Brexit if, alarmed at the impact
on the Northern Irish economy and
a potential threat to peace, enough
unionists choose to throw in their
lot with the Republic as their only
chance to regain EU membership.
This feverish speculation has been
recklessly encouraged for some time
by the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar,
reaching a peak during Boris
Johnson’s first visit as Prime Minister
to Belfast yesterday.
But the contention that Irish unity
is now inevitable is misguided, for
a number of reasons. One is that the
anticipated post-Brexit collapse of
the Northern Irish economy might
not happen. Brexit may, whisper it,
be a success. Even if exiting the EU
is a disaster, it will impact every bit
as negatively, if not more so, on the

Republic’s economy, hardly increasing
its attraction to disaffected unionists.
The main reason that it’s mistaken,
though, is that Irish unity has little to
do with economics. When the Irish
economy was on its knees in the 1980s,
nationalists were no less committed to
a united Ireland. That’s because they’re
nationalists. The clue is in the name.
The argument that unionists will
suddenly abandon their pro-Union
convictions as a result of Brexit is
rooted in a condescending belief
that their Britishness isn’t as genuine
as nationalists’ Irishness, and that
they’d be prepared to barter it for a
mess of potage. If there’s one thing
unionists have always been good at,
it’s saying what they think, and when
they consistently say that they wish
to remain part of the UK, it’s probably
best to start from the assumption that
they mean what they say.
Imagining that Brexit will blow a
hole in unionists’ entire identity is
just another spasm of confirmation
bias from people who never took the
pro-Union community in Northern
Ireland seriously in the first place, and
who need Brexit to be an economic
and constitutional disaster to justify
their rearguard campaign of sabotage.
Just because some unionists wish the
UK to remain in the EU does not mean

It’s a Sinn Fein fantasy that


leaving the European
Union will trigger a crisis
of identity in the North

eilis o’hanlonnlon


T


he big issue facing
Britain, of course, is
Brexit. Or is it? What
millions of voters are
really bothered about,
whether the UK leaves
the EU or not, is our chronic housing
shortage. With politics in such flux,
an election before Boris Johnson’s
end-of-October Brexit deadline is
entirely possible. But if the new Prime
Minister doesn’t show signs of tackling
our acute housing crisis – and soon –
it’s an election he’s likely to lose.
The average UK home now costs
eight times average earnings, more
than twice the historic norm. That
crippling affordability multiple rises
to 12 times across London and the
South East. While house price rises
have slowed, countless young adults,
even well-paid professionals, are
“priced out”. Often spending half
their income on rent, while enduring
long commutes, their home-
ownership dream is slipping away.
Back in the early Nineties, when
I left university, 36 per cent of 16- to
24-year-olds owned their own home.
Now it’s just 10 per cent. The share of
25- to 34-year-old owner-occupiers
has plunged from 67 to 38 per cent
over the same period. Well over half

a generation is being denied the
security of home-ownership at this
crucial family-forming age. Some
78 per cent of 35- to 44-year-olds were
homeowners in 1991, but just 56 per
cent are now. The share of pensioner
owner-occupiers has soared, but
overall home-ownership has dropped
from well over 70 per cent of UK
households to around 60 per cent –
below the EU average.
Our political and media classes have
forgotten how close Jeremy Corbyn
came to power at the last election, and
why. In May 2015, David Cameron
gained 36 per cent of voters in their
thirties, while 34 per cent backed Ed
Miliband. In the June 2017 election, that
position was transformed. Corbyn’s
hard-line rhetoric wooed 55 per cent
of thirtysomething voters, while
Theresa May took just 29 per cent.
That’s because, with even high-
achievers now facing the locked door
of housing unaffordability, a growing
number of voters feel capitalism
doesn’t work for them. Just as owner-
occupiers are more likely to vote Tory,
young adults upset they can’t buy a
home as their parents did are prone to
vote for “a shake-up”.
While we need around 250,
new homes a year to meet population
growth and household formation, UK
house-building hasn’t reached that
level since the mid-Seventies. There’s a
massive shortage backlog. Frustration
and insecurity abound as, for so many,
the instinctive and entirely reasonable
ambition of home-ownership is
thwarted. And, at the sharp end, high
rents and a chronic social housing
shortage have driven a shocking rise
in homelessness and overcrowding.
Since 2013, the Government has
responded with Help-to-Buy. This
has just stoked demand, handing all-
powerful developers huge profits by

channelling first-time buyers into often
substandard newbuild homes. There’s
a growing consensus that we need
radical supply-side reforms instead


  • particularly to the UK’s opaque and
    deeply dysfunctional market for land.
    At present, landowners and
    developers have every incentive to
    sit on their holdings, even if they
    have planning permission. Relentless
    demand, in the face of slow supply,
    pushes up land prices, and ultimately
    homebuyer prices and developer
    profits even more. As local councils
    grant more planning permissions, the
    big players are engaged in a deliberate
    building go-slow.
    Official “new dwelling” numbers are
    up – but this increase reflects a spate
    of often shoddy one-off conversions
    of office buildings and shops. The
    over-mighty builders that now
    dominate the industry are producing
    far fewer homes than before the
    financial crisis, despite gorging on
    Help-to-Buy cash from the taxpayer.
    Only bold action can break this
    deadlock – with fines for building
    delays and the use of compulsory
    purchase, if necessary, to release
    acreage. Landowners should be fairly
    compensated – but when planning
    permission is granted, land values
    rocket, often 100-fold or more. So
    this vast “planning gain” should be
    shared with local government – to
    fund the new schools, hospitals and
    other infrastructure that would make
    house-building more popular.
    Although Brexit is front and centre,
    the Government needs to think hard
    about housing. As communities
    secretary, Sajid Javid talked tough
    about “a more active, muscular state
    role” in our land market, but was
    frustrated by Downing Street. Now
    Chancellor, will he be true to his word?
    Campaigners and think tanks


Tackling developers and


landowners is vital to
appease a generation that
cannot buy their own home

liam halligangan


sally jones


No, Brexit won’t lead to a United Ireland


To VAR or not


to VAR – it’s a


question of good


old honour


W


hat would Sir
Lancelot say? Video
Assistant Referee
(VAR) technology is being
introduced even into that
most chivalric and
gentlemanly of sports,
jousting – and in the heart
of King Arthur country,
Pendennis Castle in
Cornwall. English Heritage
is trialling a system during
jousts there, like those used
to monitor cheating
footballers contesting
goal-line decisions and
petulant tennis players
disputing line calls. (“You
cannot be serious!”)
I’m all for fairness, but
jousting is a great medieval
tradition where courtesy is
key, and the referee’s word
is law. Why drag 21st-
century technology into a
14th-century pursuit? No
doubt we shall soon be
rewriting Tennyson’s ‘Idylls
of the King’ and the stirring
accounts of the ‘Last Great
Battle in the West’ where
Arthur’s uppity nephew,
Modred, finally gets his
comeuppance: “So all day
long the noise of battle
rolled / Amid the click of the
VAR machine...”
I have spent happy hours
watching jousting at
Knebworth House, where
dashing Lord Cobbold, a
modern-day Lancelot to the
tips of his gauntlets, would
gallop out arrayed as ‘David
of Knebworth’ to take on
‘The Black Knight’.
Although banned from this
thrilling sport in his mid-70s
on the spurious grounds of
age, he would abhor this
newfangled approach as a
slur on his honour. Neither
he nor the other combatants
would dream of claiming a
bogus hit by subterfuge.
Another traditional,
courtly sport, fencing, has
already fallen victim to the
curse of technology. In the
1976 Olympics, star Russian
pentathlete Boris
Onischenko registered a
series of unlikely-looking
hits on the electronic
scoreboard programmed to
detect when either blade
found its mark. Only after
British protests did it
emerge that he had rewired


that, given a binary choice, they’d opt
for the EU over staying in the UK.
Brexit has simply replaced
demographics as the United Irelanders’
panacea of choice. There have been
predictions for decades that the rising
proportion of Catholic schoolchildren
in Northern Ireland will lead inexorably
to unity, and it may come to pass in
due course; but the polling evidence
remains mixed. Unionists who may be
swayed by Brexit do exist, but so do
Catholics who prefer the status quo to
constitutional upheaval. Neither are
numerous enough to make a dent in
any unity poll, which, in Ulster, will
come down to traditional determinants
of cultural and political identity.
The increasing population of
immigrants in Northern Ireland can’t
be ignored, either. They have no skin
in this ancient sectarian game, and
will vote in future in accordance with
their best interests. To put it simply,
it’s complicated.
Just be careful to break the news
gently to Sinn Fein and its newly
energised supporters in Remainer
circles in Britain, who all seem
prepared to bet the farm on Irish unity
being imminent. The disappointment
will be bitter enough when they finally
realise that Scottish independence isn’t
a shoo-in after Brexit either.

The PM needs to channel Churchill


and take on the housing monopolists


across the political spectrum – from
Shelter to the Right-of-centre
Centre for Policy Studies – have
been publishing reports into shared
planning gain. Land values reflect
the proximity of existing state-
funded infrastructure and local
commerce, the argument goes, so
the community should benefit from
windfall profits related to further
development. Tory MPs have led
the charge, arguing for planning
gain significantly to accrue to local
government, funding the local
amenities that new housing requires.
This is an idea that goes back
to Adam Smith and the Scottish
Enlightenment. Planning gain is
shared in many countries – including
France, Germany and many Asian
nations. And it used to happen here.
The UK’s post-war building boom
was driven by legislation ensuring
planning gain was shared, which
kept land prices reasonable. Millions
of affordable homes were built,
including a wave of social housing.
The 1946 New Towns Act was key –
creating 32 settlements, funded partly
on shared planning gain, now home
to three million people.
Even Winston Churchill backed
it. “Roads are made, railway
services are improved, electric light
turns night into day,” he boomed,
supporting Lloyd George’s radical
1909 People’s Budget. “To not one of
these improvements does the land
monopolist contribute... yet by every
one of them the value of his land
is enhanced.”
Ironically, it was governments led
by Churchill and then Macmillan
which in the Fifties pandered to
big landowners, passing laws that
prevented planning gain being shared.
Will Boris Johnson gainsay his hero
to reverse this historic mistake?

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his épée so he could register
a hit at will, thus saving
himself the trouble and
exertion of scoring a real one.
No prizes for guessing his
new nickname after the
inevitable disqualification:
‘Dishonischenko’. Having a
human referee rather than
the electronic system
would have removed the
temptation to cheat.
As an aficionado of
the equally ancient and
fiendishly complex game of
Real Tennis, I dread the
introduction of VAR to
examine the precise
position of every “chase”
(double bounce), where an
inch either way can mean
the difference between
winning or losing the point.
We accept the decision of
the marker (umpire), even if
seething inside, and usually
give the opponent the
benefit of the doubt.
In Real Tennis, as in
jousting, etiquette is all.
We tap our rackets on the
floor to acknowledge an
opponent’s good shot.
Unlike its descendant lawn
tennis, cheating is almost
unknown. So are swearing
and racket throwing, though
one excitable gentleman
attaches his racket to his
wrist to stop himself hurling
it into the dedans (viewing
gallery) when roused. Henry
VIII, who expected all calls
to go his way, would have
hated having his honour
called into question through
electronic monitoring and
would have sent any
pettifogging lackey who
suggested it to the Tower.
Meanwhile, Emily Sewell,
English Heritage’s head of
events, insists VAR is crucial
because “jousting is an
extremely serious business
and the stakes are high.”
Of course they are – but
authentic knights are
honour-bound to joust fairly
and respect the ref ’s
decision. Maybe it should be
settled by single combat.

follow
Liam Halligan
on Twitter
@LiamHalligan;
read more at
telegraph.co.uk/
opinion

read more at
telegraph.co.uk/
opinion

follow Sally Jones on
Twitter @bagg yjones;
read more at
telegraph.co.uk/opinion

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