The story of Starmer's family home

Out of control house prices - a story of our time

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer grew up in a small pebble-dashed house near Oxted in Surrey, south of London. “Money was tight.” Sir Keir was born in 1962. We are not told how near to Oxted the family lived but the story of Oxted is the story of the biggest structural problem in England, namely out of control house prices.

I lived in Hayes outside Bromley, which is not that far from Oxted and I remember bringing my eldest daughter to a tennis tournament there. There are quite a few private schools as well as grammar schools, a big attraction no doubt to the moneyed middle-class who live there now.

When I arrived on the high street, I thought crikey I really am in England. It has several either Tudor or perhaps mock-Tudor buildings which are beautiful. It is very green and surrounded by some National Trust properties including Chartwell, the former country home of Churchill, where I also spent much of my time.

Unless you live in a cave, you know that Sir Keir Starmer’s father Rodney Starmer was a toolmaker and his mother, Josephine Starmer, was a nurse. Little Keir was the second eldest of four children – he has an older sister and younger twin siblings. We can argue over whether having a father who was a toolmaker and a mother a nurse makes the family working class or lower middle class. I would go with lower middle class but it’s not that important.

What is important is that this family of six, with a toolmaker father and a nurse mother could live near Oxted. This meant that the super bright second child, who always seemed to have his head in a book, went to the local grammar school. From there he went to study law at the University of Leeds until finally he went all the way to the dreamy spires of Oxford. Our boy at Oxford.

Let’s say the Starmer family home had three bedrooms – it is very unlikely that each of the children had their own room. The boys probably shared and the sister had her own room. So we are talking about a modest, three bedroom home, near Oxted where every penny is watched by the prudent, hardworking and dignified mother and father.

Photo by Terrah Holly on Unsplash

Do you know how much a three-bedroom home in Oxted costs now? I went on the estate agents to have a look. Here is a 3-bedroom end of terrace house for sale for over half a million pounds sterling. That’s proper money as we say in our Anglo-Irish house, not funny money, Euros.

https://www.onthemarket.com/details/12211465/

Say the parents are solidly middle-class perhaps the wife is a nurse and the father works in IT. This house is also a 3-bed but detached and in Hurst Green. That will cost you a whopping £800,000. https://www.onthemarket.com/details/15109332/

Without the bank of mum and dad, that house is well out of reach of your nurse/IT couple.

Perhaps you want to live on the High Street in Oxted, this picturesque end of terrace house could be yours if you have £575,000. https://www.onthemarket.com/details/15082697/

But it is only a two bed – so good luck getting your four children into that.

There are plenty of homes for the bankers though, those who escape to the commuter belt and live in beautiful Oxted. Personally, I like this 5-bed detached on Westerham Road in Oxted. That will cost you £2,250,000. That’s quite a few zeros. https://www.onthemarket.com/details/13443194/

On the other end of the market, the starter one bedroom apartment is coming in at £335,000. https://www.onthemarket.com/details/15028102/

In truth what chance would the working-class family of four have of living in Oxted today, 2024? Pretty low I’d say. And this is the problem for Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour government. The ridiculous out of control house prices in Britain these days mean that a working-class family like his own would have absolutely zero chance of living in Oxted or indeed anywhere in the Southeast.

The new Labour government has come out fighting though, “Starmer and Reeves have pledged to have 1.5 million homes built over the course of this parliament.”

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-speech-chancellor-labour-d9z6mll7c

You can loosen the planning regulations of course, which is exactly what Labour will announce. The Times are reporting that there will be a ‘restoration of mandatory local housebuilding targets while relaxing planning restrictions on building on “ugly” parts of the green belt, which Sir Keir Starmer has branded the “grey belt”. There will be an enhanced presumption in favour of development.’

How much this will impact on the green and pleasant land that surrounds places such as Oxted will be hotly debated. The other problem with house prices is immigration. Prices are governed by supply and demand.

Boosting supply is a start but with net immigration running at 600,000 a year even with 1.5 million new houses over 5 years (300,000 houses a year) this means you are 300,000 houses out every year, per year and that’s not including all the catch up you must do. It doesn’t help to bring down your immigration numbers if you scrap the one scheme that seemed to act as a deterrent – namely Rwanda. Why are Labour scrapping that again? Doesn’t make sense to me. But as usual scrapping things is always easier than building things, especially when it comes to housing.