Steve Reed must choose: will he side with reformers who understand the need for the private sector to be allowed to deliver, or with the old guard whose obsession with social and affordable housing means perpetual scarcity dressed up as compassion? Asks Simon Clarke

When the new Housing Secretary, Steve Reed, declared on Monday he is ready to “Build Baby Build”, my phone lit up. Conservative YIMBY’s slogan, splashed across the papers and recycled by Labour’s man in Marsham Street. It was flattering, if a little disorientating. One of our now infamous blue caps – and the bill – is in the post.

But slogans are easy; delivery is what matters. And the challenge facing the secretary of sState is whether he wants to be remembered as a builder, or as the next victim of the social housing mafia.

Who are the social housing mafia? I refer to the group at the heart of government policy on homes, who are united above all by their profound lack of interest in private housebuilding. They include minister........

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