COMMENT: Labour's (Housing) Stock Hits New Low

11.25.44pm GMT Tue 18th Nov 2008

As a PR exercise, led by Council Leader Steve Reed, last weekend's Lambeth Tenants Conference was only slightly less successful than asking Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to advertise answering machines.

Tenants finally had enough of Labour's bully-boy tactics and told them so before staging a mass-walkout that left the Labour Leadership dangerously talking to itself.

Tenants quite rightly wanted to talk about the appalling financial mess that Labour has led them into and what they are going to do about it given that they are being made to pick up the pieces in higher rents and reduced (or non-existent) services.

Labour has now adopted a bizarre bunker mentality and, instead of fessing-up, engaging with tenants, and working together to find a solution, Labour now seems intent on confronting them with an empty display of macho politics.

We do not need the powers of Mystic Meg to see trouble ahead. The Council and Tenants are now set on a collision course.

Like the Titanic tragedy, the root of Labour's problems began when someone dreamt up the idea of building the largest ALMO the world had ever seen. It was a very hush-hush project, so top secret that nobody dare utter a word during the 2006 election.

The ALMO was launched after a massive PR onslaught but some wondered even then whether the enormous structure would float. Any doubters were quickly rebuffed. The ALMO was said to be unsinkable and was to be the salvation of the Council.

And so, just a few months ago the ALMO set-off on its maiden voyage in a blaze of publicity. Such was the confidence up on the bridge that Full Steam Ahead was ordered - even though there were already reports of difficult waters ahead. The Captain even staged a grand party to tell everyone that they'd actually reach their destination early.

Holed fatally below the water line by a £10 million gash caused by an unseen iceberg during the orgy of self-congratulation, Labour's Captain Reed has sternly ordered tenants into the lifeboats, not to save their lives but to row like fury to tow the stricken flagship safely into port.

Tenants, however, are having none of it and expect the captain to do the decent thing and to go down with his ship.

Labour's greatest mistake was that they took a reckless gamble. They took a serious gamble that at a stroke they could absolve themselves of all responsibility for the admittedly difficult task of improving Lambeth's Housing stock.

What they lost sight of was that their mad gamble was not actually about mere administrative convenience but of real people's homes, lives and futures.