I get sick of the fluff and lies on a day-to-day basis - it reminds me of the property training industry - and General Election time feels like Black Friday. Extra lies, at warp speed, hurtling into our ears and inboxes. But - we’ve been promised stability, and it definitely looks like Keir Starmer is as boring as he says he is - and that’s not going to be a bad thing. One little-spoken feature of the carnage since Covid started, through partygate and into the Sunak premiership, is the number of ministerial changeovers that took place - no wonder nothing has a clear strategy or is working when the rudder keeps changing.
Worse, there was flux in the civil service driven by some sheer vindictiveness by certain prime ministers who were only in post for, say, 45 days – let’s not let that name, now no longer a Member of Parliament, darken our doors again.
We are used to it though, in housing. We know what has happened to housing ministers since 1997. The Secretary of State position looked like one of a small amount of continuity, although Gove was sacked by Johnson and not brought back until Sunak came in, that period (excluding parliamentary recess etc.) was only about a month.
Rayner is there now and has been very vocal in warming up for this post - although, like quite a few of the Labour plans, was busy watering herself down right before the election. This could have, of course, simply been following the party line of toning things down, not looking extreme, or whatever, just to get the Ming Vase from one end of the room to another without smashing it.
Let’s just run the ruler over what she’s said, though, thus far, and our best guess as to what she is going to change - and a little about her, which frames some of her drivers I think.