When she wasn’t expanding her own property empire, Rayner was meant to be driving a huge increase in new housing starts. When it came into office, Labour committed to building 1.5 million new homes over the parliament. That levy alone is estimated to put an extra £20,000 on the cost of building a new home. It has imposed strict affordable housing targets for new developments, which mean there is less incentive for developers to build anything. We are hardly building enough homes for all the asylum seekers coming across the English Channel every day, never mind for everyone else.