Jack Airey, a former No. 10 special adviser who tried to get a planning and infrastructure bill through under the last Conservative government, said “people that oppose house building often have the loudest voice, and they use it … and yet, the people that support house building generally don’t really say it, because why would they? They’ve got better things to do.”
“I think it’s really positive for the government to have a pro-house building and pro-development message out there, and, more importantly, a pro-development caucus in parliament and beyond,” he said.
In a bid to steady the nerves of anxious MPs, Reed told the parliamentary Labour Party last week that his Trump-style slogan is a “bit of fun” that hides a serious point — that there simply aren’t enough houses being built in the U.K.
And an aide to Reed rejected concerns from Labour MPs that nature is not being sufficiently considered, saying “nobody understands [nature concerns] more than Steve.
“We reject this kind of binary choice between nature and building,” they said. “We think that you can do both. It just requires imaginative, ultimately sensible and pragmatic policy-making, and that’s what we’re doing.
“We’re not ashamed to campaign in primary colors,” the Reed aide said.
Noah Keate contributed reporting.