“Britain needs a new generation of council housing built at scale… We should also support fair rent controls, giving renters breathing space while expanding the supply of low-cost housing.”
Grahame Morris MP wrote a piece for the Socialist Campaign Group’s 2026 pamphlet ‘The Socialist Policies We Need’. You can read the pamphlet in full below.
Andy Burnham argues that Labour should embrace “aspirational socialism”, a politics that rewards hard work, backs ambition and spreads opportunity. Yet nowhere is that ideal further from reality than in Britain’s housing market.
For millions, the housing ladder no longer exists. It has been replaced by a housing treadmill: work harder, pay more rent, but never get any closer to owning a home. If we want to make aspiration meaningful again, housing must be at the centre of our politics.
The housing treadmill doesn’t just trap individuals; it holds back the entire economy. Families spending half their income on rent have less to spend on the high street, less to save, less to invest and less confidence to take risks. Businesses lose customers, communities lose investment, and economic growth stagnates.
Housing is often treated as a social issue, but it is also one of Britain’s biggest economic challenges. A country cannot hope to build a high-growth economy while so much of its wealth is absorbed by rising housing costs rather than the productive economy.
The answer is not simply to build more homes, but to build the right homes. Britain needs a new generation of council housing built at scale, not as a relic of the past, but as an investment in the country’s future.
A major programme of council housebuilding would create skilled jobs, stimulate local supply chains and support economic growth, while providing genuinely affordable homes for the people who need them.
Crucially, council housing keeps public investment working for the public good. Unlike much of the private rented sector, where rental income is extracted as private profit, council rents are recycled back into maintaining existing homes and building new ones. The result is a housing system that creates lasting public assets rather than continually transferring wealth out of local communities.
However, building at scale is a long-term project. Families trapped on the housing treadmill cannot wait years for relief. That is why we should also support fair rent controls, giving renters breathing space while expanding the supply of low-cost housing. Lower rents do more than ease financial pressure; they allow people to save, plan and invest in their own futures.
That is what aspirational socialism should mean in practice. It is about giving people the stability to move forward. When families are no longer forced to spend an unsustainable share of their income on rent, they can finally begin saving for a deposit, buying their first home or pursuing other ambitions that today remain out of reach. Council housing is not an alternative to aspiration, but it is the foundation upon which aspiration is built.
Housing reform should not end with building homes. We must also reform the way we tax them. Britain’s property tax system is still shaped by a snapshot of the housing market in the early 1990s, not the country we live in today.
Council Tax is based on outdated valuations that bear little relation to current property wealth, while Stamp Duty discourages people from moving by adding a significant cost to every step up or down the housing ladder. An aspirational society should make it easier, not harder, for people to move forward.
Replacing Council Tax and Stamp Duty with a proportional property tax would bring the system into line with modern Britain. Instead of fixed bands based on decades-old valuations, every home would be taxed according to its current market value at a single, transparent rate. In effect, households in lower-value homes would pay less, while those in higher-value properties would contribute more in line with their property wealth.
This is not about increasing overall taxation, but about making it fairer and more closely tied to real property wealth. It would lower bills for millions of households, with around three in four households gaining, especially in areas where house prices have not kept pace with the national average. It would also ask more of those whose housing wealth has risen most significantly over time.
At the same time, abolishing Stamp Duty would remove one of the biggest friction points in the housing market, making it easier for families to move when their circumstances change, whether for work, family or retirement.
The effect would be to unlock mobility in the housing system, while aligning taxation more closely with actual wealth rather than historical accident, ensuring that housing contributes fairly to the services and communities that sustain its value.
Taken together, these reforms amount to more than housing policy. Building a new generation of council homes, protecting renters and creating a fairer property tax system would restore housing as a platform for opportunity rather than a barrier to it.
That is what aspirational socialism should mean, not simply redistributing wealth once inequality has taken hold, but building an economy where security comes first, and where more people have the stability to save, the opportunity to own, and the freedom to shape their own future.
Housing is not just another policy area; it is the foundation upon which opportunity is built. It is where the promise of aspiration is either delivered or denied. For too long, Britain’s housing market has rewarded those who already own wealth while asking those who work hard simply to stand still. We must redress the balance.
Aspirational socialism must turn the housing treadmill back into a housing ladder. That means building, protecting and reforming, not as ends in themselves, but so that hard work once again offers a genuine route to security, home ownership and a better life.
- Grahame Morris is the Labour MP for Easington, you can follow him on Twitter/X and Facebook.
- You can read the SCG pamphlet ‘The Socialist Policies We Need’ in full here. The foreword says that “We hope this contributes to a debate across the Labour Party, trade unions and the wider movement about the political programme needed to deliver the change people voted for, to build a better future for our communities and to prevent the rise of a Trump-style government here in Britain.“
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