Geoffrey Lean is one of those we can and should use as the butt end of our policy compass. The latest proof being this:

Yet the green belt – originating with the Attlee government – has been astonishingly successful. In 1940, London and Los Angeles had similar greater urban areas. Since then, Los Angeles’ sprawl, without any green-belt protection, has covered an area equivalent to reaching from Brighton to Cambridge.

That is not the proof of success, that is the proof of failure. The Green Belt exists because the British haute bourgeoisie saw the success of the pre- 1940s free market in planning permissions. Things like Metroland, the building of housing the British wished to live in where Britons wished to live. This was, obviously, not to be put up with. How dare anyone come to live where said haute bourgeoisie had their views of rolling Home County acres? Have to put a stop to that, eh?

So they did. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Which, as we say, should be blown up, proper blown up - kablooie.

On the grounds that the law, political policy, should not be used to preference the desires of the haute bourgeoisie. We’re a democracy now, recall? Time to stop putting the proles into urban rabbit hutch slums and get back to building homes for Britons.

Kablooie, it’s the only way to be sure.

Tim Worstall