Corbyn: Poor families ‘socially cleansed’ out of cities by Tory housing policies

Poorer families face being “socially cleansed” out of the cities they live in under Tory housing policies, Jeremy Corbyn claimed as he prepared to face his first major electoral test.

The Labour leader said people living in the private rented sector were being forced out of areas they have called home for years because of rising costs, and blamed the Tories’ failure to regulate landlords.

Mr Corbyn said voting Labour on May 5 was the best way for communities to resist the “onslaught” of Tory cuts which he claimed were being imposed for political rather than economic reasons.

But polling experts forecast that Labour could face a setback in Mr Corbyn’s first national electoral test, with the party losing dozens of council seats.

Critics are set to step up their attacks on the Labour leader if the contests, which include councils across England, mayoral elections in cities including London and votes to the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, produce a lacklustre set of results.

Mr Corbyn said the central message of his campaign was tackling the “unfairness of this country” as he warned about the impact of the housing crisis.

He said a visit to Bristol had shown him the effects of rising rents on households in parts of the city, a problem which was being repeated across Britain.

“They are being socially cleansed out of a community they have lived in for many, many years.

“The same is happening in city after city across Britain because we have a Government that is not interested in regulation, not interested in the consequences of deregulation of the private rented sector.”

Speaking at the campaign launch in Harlow, Essex, he said: “We have to have a vision on housing and it’s Labour that has that vision – they want to sell off, we want to build.

“They want to decant, we want to keep communities together. There is a very big difference between those two philosophies.”

The Labour leader put his anti-austerity message at the heart of his pitch to voters.

“The cuts being inflicted on working families, disabled people and the failure to stand up for communities across Britain are a political choice, not an economic necessity,” he said.

“David Cameron and George Osborne’s policies aren’t just deeply unfair – they have failed. They have failed on the deficit, failed on debt, failed on investment, failed on productivity, exports, growth and earnings.”

Mr Corbyn stepped up Labour’s resistance to the Government’s plans to turn all English state schools into academies, taking them out of local authority control.

He said: “The schools budget is being cut for the first time since the 1990s. Class sizes are up, the teacher shortage is getting worse and there is a crisis, in many places, of school places.

“Yet the Conservatives want to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on forcing all schools to become academies. That won’t benefit a single child or train a single teacher, it won’t ease the anguish of parents worried about school places.”

Mr Corbyn’s opponents in the Labour ranks could sharpen their knives if Labour does not gain hundreds of councillors in the English elections.

Asked what he would view as a success, Mr Corbyn would not be drawn on a number, insisting his goal was “Labour people being elected, quite simple”.

He insisted he had “no concerns whatsoever” about his opponents within the party.

Former shadow cabinet minister Michael Dugher said Labour “should and must grow in May” and claimed the party should “gain at least 400 seats in the local elections”.

But experts predicted that Labour could actually lose seats in England.

Polling expert Professor John Curtice said the elections would be “demanding” for Labour, but victory for Sadiq Khan in London could be Mr Corbyn’s “salvation”.

Many of the local elections are a repeat of contests from 2012, when Ed Miliband’s Labour was performing well in the polls, making a repeat performance hard to achieve.

Writing in Juncture, the journal of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Prof Curtice said: “Jeremy Corbyn faces a relatively demanding electoral test at a time when many are looking to see if he ‘fails’.

“Even if Labour were to enjoy some recovery from its position a year ago, the party would still suffer net losses.

“Indeed, simply repeating its performance locally in last year’s local elections would see the party lose control of Dudley, Cannock Chase, Crawley, Redditch, Rossendale and Southampton, a set of losses that would undoubtedly be regarded by Mr Corbyn’s critics as evidence that he had lost the plot in middle England – when in fact they might simply be an indication that the party was just treading water.”

In a separate analysis, local election experts professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher forecast Labour would lose 150 council seats.

_{Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Nick Ansell / PA Wire.}