Britain's housing debate finally has to become realistic

The British housing debate has, for the better part of a decade, been a contest of preferred fictions. The right has pretended that planning reform alone will deliver the homes the country needs; the left has pretended that public construction can be funded without raising the taxes that would fund it.

Neither proposition is now defensible. Even the most generous read of the consented-but-unbuilt pipeline shows it is too small to meet demand; even the most ambitious read of the available capital shows it does not stretch to the scale required.