Blair is gone and with him the era of spin. Gordon is a straight talking no nonsense type of politician. So out with the ‘New’ and in with the ‘Old’. Or so some of the media would have us believe. But if his first speech in Manchester is anything to go by, the new boss is cut from same neo-liberal tree as his predecessor.

“In 2007”, he told his audience, “housing will be a priority…the promise of [a] property owning democracy must be open to all those wanting to get on the housing ladder for the first time.”

There are at least three things wrong with that statement. The priority of the million and half on council housing waiting lists is first of all to have a roof over their heads and the security and peace of mind that comes with it. It might come as as shock but scrambling up the property ladder is not an actual consideration for them. But evidently for Brown, as with Blair and before them Thatcher, it bloody well should be. (Funny how ‘choice’ seems to no longer apply, the moment what were previously public assets, are safely in private hands?)

Then there is the PM’s employment of the phrase ‘property owning democracy’. This expression was coined in the Thatcher era and rather implies that participatory democracy ought to be the preserve of property owners only.

New Labour electoral strategy with its slavish devotion to the whims of Middle England has, from the beginning operated, as if this was already the case. However even with putting these consideration aside, the biggest contradiction revolves around something Brown has himself presided over.

In 2006 buy-to-let investors enjoyed tax relief worth a staggering 2 billion. Not only do first time buyers not qualify for a penny but research by Guardian Money (The Guardian 23 June 2007) reveals the annual tax subsidy to landlords is likely to rise to £3 billion by 2008. In other words eclipsing the total investment by government in social housing!

It is a truly bizarre set of priorities that sees families without a home they can securely call their own, (or who might actually have a roof over their heads but live in overcrowded conditions) being forced to actually subsidise individuals who start with two homes and aspire to own more.

Even in an era where the super rich can pay less in tax than their cleaners, these statistics are still fairly startling. What perhaps makes these set of figures appear so particularly perverse is that they could so easily be corrected.

The straight transfer of £3 billion, ring fenced for the sole purpose of building council housing year on year, would instantly lift the sense of Dickensian despair currently clouding the lives of hundreds of thousands on the waiting lists. The removal of tax relief for the growing band of proto-Rachman’s would at the same time force at least some of them to sell up, possibly to those currently renting from them. Last year, nearly 67% of new build apartments in London were swallowed up by ‘buy-to-let’ landlords.

So this is a genuine conundrum for the Brown government because with every other neo-liberal regime, its instinct and fidelity is invariably to the ‘over-dog’.

The political problem for New Labour is not the embarrassment of having 1.5 million on the waiting list but that its impulsive feathering of better off nests is heading for head on collision with another equally important ideological goal – the expansion of the ‘home-owning democracy’. It will be interesting to see which way Brown jumps. But one way or the other, it will, you suspect, be the under-dog picking up the tab.