People like you won't be happy until the UK is all white and has a population of about 1 million people.

Outside of the SE and London property prices aren't that high, in fact in Wales, the NE and Scotland property prices have barely risen since 2008. Parts of NW England, too. If there's a population problem it's that too many people live in the SE and London.

You know the Conservatives existed before Maggie Thatcher, right? And Birmingham was a Tory city based on the municipal government of Joesph Chamberlain that directly intervened in the local economy to clean up and modernise the city, he would go on to become a Conservative and his son would become Tory PM.

How can the state stop single parenthood? So you want the state to force people to stay in failing relationships? Punish women for walking away? Honestly, why do you think divorce rates shot up when divorce laws were liberalised? People were desperate to leave their failing relationships. The idea that the state can force people to stay together is insanity and is sure to be met with utter rejection at the ballot box. Vote Conservative, be forced to stay in a failing marriage! The only reason divorce rates were lower is because it was illegal to get one without ticking a bunch of restrictive conditions. If you want people to stay together, easing the financial pressures couples face will probably be best but that means big changes not paltry tax benefits. Provide childcare payments, offer more parental leave. And it's perfectly possible to bring up children without being married. Many families are bringing up children well without being married. The truth is most people aren't religious now and so marriage is just a fun day at a wedding, most people don't ascribe much value to it anyway. That's why the people that do get married now tend to stay together for longer because they think really hard before getting married, they're not socially pressured into it (only to get divorced ten years later).

I am gay. I have a boyfriend. We have a great family. We have lovely nieces that we love to spend time with. We have a very nice family. It's certainly not chaos.

Cecil Parkinson in the 80s had to quit because of his love child, John Major had an affair with Edwina Curry. I don't think Boris is the first Tory to have an affair

I think one of the issues now is that not many people live in council/ housing association housing and so it feels like a benefit going to a lucky minority. Back in the 70s and 80s lots of people lived in council housing and so the right to buy discount felt like it benefited quite a lot of people.

I would support a housing system where again it becomes much more common for people to live "starter" homes managed by councils/ housing associations, in that case I think it would be fairer for the govt to help those people move towards home ownership. But right now the reality is many people renting live in private houses and so they wouldn't benefit from the sort of scheme mentioned by the author.

Prior to 1945 we had close to no regulation of where you could build, if you owned a piece of land you could build on it. And much of outer London was built by the private property boom of the 1930s. It's not exactly a terrible looking place. I think many would moan more about the council blocks built in the post war eras.

Town and Planning Act introduced by Labour post 1945 was a highly statist system, one of the most restrictive in the world, it effectively nationalised all land and said you can only build on your own private land with state permission. It's a highly socialistic policy that Conservatives should be screaming to get rid of. If this goes through, it will be one of the biggest pro market victories for the Tories since the 1980s, without a doubt. While it's hard to imagine a completely free market again in land, zoning will go a good way to freeing up land in the UK. My concern would be that councils are overly restrictive in making a zone for development. I am not sure if the govt will put some sort of mandatory duty on councils to free up enough land for a certain amount of housing based on the new analysis that will be made by central Govt over how many houses an area needs.

I'm also in favour of the Central govt encouraging more people to move outside London and the SE. This used to happen in the post war eras, well at least in regard to London. People were actively encouraged to get houses outside the Capital. I don't think it would be a bad idea, especially in these work from home times, to actively encourage a degree of population shift.

I just make the point that it was the Town and Planning Act that introduced a highly state regulated and restricted planning system taking away the more individualistic belief that a land owner should be able to do whatever they want with their land, that is how house building worked prior to the Attlee govt. Post WW2 we did build huge numbers of council homes which helped to house people, in many cases it was not about giving someone a first time home but a better home, so funnily enough by the time you got to the 70s and 80s Britain had homes, especially in cities, that sat empty.

Since the 1980s we've had a lack of council housing and not enough private housing. Now you can fix that by building more council homes, which I think we should do, but we also need houses for people to buy. And making more land available for purchase will lower the cost of the houses.

I make the point about Labour, because it's funny seeing Tories get so upset about a liberalising of a market (isn't that what many Tories claim to love?). The system introduced by Labour was based on a high degree of state control, this change is a big liberalisation and freeing up of the land market.

None of the stuff you said would work, lowering immigration isn't going to change the situation we face as of right now. And interest rates going up won't mean more people can afford a home, it will make it harder to buy a home. The reason prices are high in some parts of the UK is because there's high demand and low supply. In a free market, the high price would attract new producers and the prices would lower as more of the product is available. But in the UK the socialist Labour government of 1945 to 1950 introduced the Town Planning Act that socialised land in the UK so that no one can build on land without the permission of the state i.e. local councils. On a principle level, you can argue it's wrong for the state to be able to tell a private land owner what they can do on their own land. But the practical problem is that it creates shortages, like any socialist system does. If you place a massive restriction on where you can build then you stop the market working properly. Now, I doubt we will ever return to what it was like pre 1945 when there was a complete free market in land so you can build on any piece of land if you owned it (something that led to the 1930s housing boom around London). But a zoning system will at least create more of a free market in property building.

I would also argue for the need for council house building, especially in parts of the country where housing will always be pricier due to a scarcity of land i.e. London.