Does Angela Rayner know what she’s doing?

Arguably the biggest issue facing the Government is the housing crisis. There seems little evidence it is getting a grip

Arguably the biggest issue facing the Government is the housing crisis. There are not enough homes, they are too expensive, and they are too difficult to build, reducing productivity and holding back the economic growth on which Labour is relying to underpin its policy agenda.
It is perhaps hardly surprising that we face a shortage given that the population has risen by 10 million over the past 25 years with no building programme to match it. Migration has accounted for around 90 per cent of the 1.34 million increase in England’s “housing deficit”. There are also many more people living alone than used to be the case, either as a result of greater longevity or family breakdown. In addition, planning controls to preserve the green belts around major cities – a legacy of the 1945 Labour government – restrict where new homes can be built.
Labour has promised to build another 1.5 million homes without any apparent analysis of why we are in this mess or how to address it. Leaving aside whether there are enough builders to carry out such a massive construction project, where are the houses going to go? 
The person entrusted to sort this out is Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister. So far she has reimposed house-building targets on local authorities, but mystifyingly reduced them for London where they are needed most. Now she is planning to scrap the Right to Buy scheme introduced by the Thatcher government. For this she has been accused of hypocrisy since she herself benefited from the scheme.
While local authorities say selling council houses is deepening the crisis because they are not being replaced by housing associations, there is an element of grandstanding in Ms Rayner’s position. She knows Right to Buy is unpopular in her party and is playing to the gallery. It will do little to improve matters to cut a programme that gets people on the housing ladder and gives them a stake in their communities.
The rental sector, especially in London, is overpriced because supply does not match demand, making it impossible for young people to save to buy a home. The worst thing that can happen now is for the Chancellor to put up capital gains tax and choke off the buy-to-let market. Landlords are already selling up in anticipation of an increase in the Budget. 
Does Labour know what it is doing?