
The first few weeks of the new Labour government have seen a burst of activity, with a substantive legislative agenda unveiled in the King’s speech. Sleeves are being rolled up as the serious people look to get on with fixing Broken Britain. Labour are intent on reforming the planning system, described by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as the “graveyard for economic ambition”, to enable a rapid build out of new housing and energy infrastructure.
There’s only one problem: so-called “Nimbys” (Not In My Back Yard) – those small minded reactionaries who have blocked planning and development for far too long – laying in front of the bulldozers of inevitable progress to keep things the way they are.
Reeves is “gearing up for a brawl” with Nimbys, according to the Telegraph, while Huffpost reports that she has “declared war” on opponents of new housing developments.
The charge of Nimby is part of a drive to build a new common sense around how to tackle the disastrous state of Britain’s social infrastructure and transition to a low carbon economy, while heading off any opposition that would force it to deviate from its neoliberal net zero business plan towards a more socially just transition.
It’s worth paying close attention to the return of the Nimby as the enemy of progress and all things good within public discourse. The charge of Nimby was coined in the 1970s to describe opposition to nuclear waste storage plans as well as other toxic industries. The meaning shifted during the 1980s, becoming pejorative, and since then it has been used as a way of denigrating any opposition to development.
It is a convenient way to smear opponents as selfish Luddites while painting all development as benevolent. It also suggests that people need to look no further into the issue, as opposition is clearly irrational and based on little more than emotive self-interest. It is the story of the informed and rational technocrat versus an untrustworthy and irrational public.
The charges of Nimbism are the first shots fired in a war over Labour’s plans for Britain’s net zero economy. Ultimately it is part of an effort to de-risk climate politics and make Britain attractive as a place for billionaire asset managers to invest.
Housing and green energy.
Labour have announced a target of building 1.5m new houses by the next election – but the state won’t build any of them. Instead the private sector is being incentivised to build, in much the same way they plan to approach funding the NHS and developing Britain’s green energy system. At the same time, mandatory targets are being introduced to pressure local councils to enable private construction in any way they can.
The problem here is that developers won’t build houses unless they can make a profit.
Developers are currently sitting on a million plots of land and show no signs of increasing the rate at which they build, despite local council targets. The market is dominated by just 10 developers, which is soon set to become nine as Barrett and Redrow are merging to form a behemoth with annual revenues of £7.45bn.
Barrett claims it does not have enough land to build on, but it only buys land when it can make a 33% profit margin on purchases. It also says that until mortgages become cheaper and interest rates drop, sales and prices will remain weak. Meaning Barrett and other developers will reduce the number of homes they plan to build until demand is stronger and returns on investment – i.e., profits – are higher.
Labour’s announcement was immediately questioned by housing activists and Greens, who pointed out that if you want affordable housing, the best way to go about it is to directly build affordable housing. Housing associations and councils agree, and have written to deputy Prime Minster Angela Rayner to say that the government won’t be able to deliver on its promise unless it injects cash into the sector, which is facing an acute funding crisis.
Yet criticism of Labour’s plans provoked a furious backlash online, with Labour party members and commentators from across the political spectrum alike claiming NIMBY greens were in opposition to the facts. Central to the backlash is the endlessly repeated claim that building more homes alone will solve Britain’s housing crisis. This is a crass reduction of a complex issue into a simple story of supply and demand, one that ignores not just the detail of house prices and rents but the history of the British housing market.
More houses do need to be built, and house building does eventually impact the sale price of housing across a city or region, as well as rents (though it might have the opposite effect locally and drive up prices), but the number of new houses Labour are calling to be built will only have modest impact at best and won’t fix the affordability problem as quickly as just building affordable housing would. Nor will it create the local services and infrastructure needed by new residents.
Somewhat ironically, Labour’s plans are already prompting a quiet backlash amongst Labour MPs with as many as half of Labour’s cabinet accused of opposing housing developments in their own constituencies. One newly elected MP, Sarah Coombes, took time out of her first day at parliament to lobby against a new housing project in her constituency.
Green infrastructure.
Carla Denyer really not happy with Ed Miliband calling out the Green Party’s NIMBY hypocrisy! pic.twitter.com/OhPTz8YGqc
— Calgie (@christiancalgie) July 18, 2024
As with housing, the government doesn’t plan on building any renewable energy. Instead it aims to encourage private investment in renewable energy and infrastructure, despite the fact that investing in renewable energy is barely profitable.
Public opposition can make private investment in big infrastructure projects risky. Impacted communities can organise against the imposition of projects in their local area – they can oppose a megafarm, new road, or power transmission line. They can also demand that the companies managing the infrastructure do it properly (I’m looking at you Thames Water) in which case shareholders receive fewer dividends and the company makes less profit. In both cases, companies lose out.
It doesn’t matter if opposition is reasonable, or if other options exist. Opposition worsens the investment environment – so it must be stopped.
For example, newly elected Green MP Adrian Ramsay has pointed out that the controversial plan for a transmission line using pylons across East Anglia to connect wind farms to the national grid is not the only viable option. National grid could put much more of the cabling underground. It would invest in an off-shore grid, focusing on building the infrastructure for future off-shore wind power and deeper energy connections to Europe.
Erecting Pylons may be the best option. It might even be the greenest one, although opposition to the project has produced enough counter-planning to suggest otherwise. But to dismiss all opposition as NIMBY, even when it comes bearing technical documentation, can’t be seen as a genuine attempt at either democratic consultation or well-evidenced policy making. It instead makes the planning process seem like a sham imposed from Westminster.
Labour MP Stella Creasy posted on X that Ramsay’s opposition to the pylons shows that the Greens are the “gobstoppers of British politics – superficially look green on the outside, but suck it and see it’s truly blue inside.” In parliament, energy secretary Ed Miliband has claimed that the Greens’ approach “simply doesn’t add up”. But the real battle being hidden behind the claims of NIMBYism is between a technocratic, pro-business government agenda and a demand for a democratic planning system and infrastructure that works for people, not just profit.
As with housing, it is a question of what kind of development we should be pursuing and with whose consent. The environment movement and much of the left has long championed alternative forms of development and ownership. Social housing and community energy projects are just two of the alternatives that stand in contrast to top-down pro-business plans.
The Wall Street Consensus at work.
Economics professor Daniela Gabor has called the plan to get private financiers Blackrock to build Britain the Wall Street Consensus (WSC). The WSC sets out a financialised plan for development, where the role of government is not to build, but to make investment attractive by reducing risk and ensuring profitability.
Handing out fat contracts to private companies to run essential services has already been tried, and it has been an emphatic failure that produced a new rentierism in place of a functioning economy. From shit in our rivers to crumbling schools and endless train delays, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a byword for profiteering and incompetence. Yet the WSC is at the very heart of Labour’s plans to fix everything in Britain from its climate commitments to the NHS.
While there is a consensus around this plan held by most governments, there is little public appetite for it. So far what it has produced is widespread opposition and dissent, not hegemony. And this is what the claims of Nimbyism are about.
To establish the WSC as the common sense of how to transition to net zero and make it the obvious solution to the profound series of socio-economic crises faced by Britain, dissent must be delegitimised.
The same forces that have fought hardest for affordable housing, or the NHS, or against climate change must be made out to be the opposition to it. Campaigners for affordable housing or rent controls have to be framed as the ones blocking new builds. Demands for a just green transition have to be seen as slowing down progress towards decarbonisation. Doctors and patients opposing further privatisation of the NHS have to be seen to be starving it of essential investment.
The vehemence of the denunciations of Nimbys speaks to the fragility of the project however. The Labour party’s public support is tepid at best, while progressive voters are looking elsewhere for someone to support. Labour will no doubt soon find themselves pressed on their plans. Out in rural and exurban areas new conservation and green movements are growing. It is far from certain that Nimbys will get out of the way, or that Labour’s plan to get Blackrock to build Britain will work.
Nicholas Beuret is a lecturer at the University of Essex researching the politics and political economy of climate change and the green transition. His book ‘The Climate Squeeze: a war of green transition’ is out with Verso in 2025.