New towns will again be a lasting Labour legacy, just as in the eras of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson. Those monuments to optimism, created in the mid-20th century by pulling down slums and building better, will be joined by seven more in an attempt to ease the housing crisis.

Enfield has been the exemplar, its proposed 21,000-home new town enthusiastically backed by its previous Labour council, which was struggling with 3,000 families expensively dumped into miserable temporary accommodation, and, I’m told, 7,000 on the waiting list. But in May’s elections, the great anti-Labour storm brought in a regime resisting the new town in every way it can. A minority Conservative group, propped up by the Greens (yes, Tory-backing Greens), informed the government that it was “withdrawing”. Both parties had run on an anti-new town campaign.

Enfield council’s Tory leader, Alessandro Georgiou, gave me this quote, but no interview: “We were elected on a clear mandate to protect Enfield’s green belt, and we have honoured that commitment by formally withdrawing from the new town process.” But there is no “process”, as it was never in a council’s power to block a new town.

Devolution and localism?........

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