Build Baby Build? More like Bluff Baby Bluff

Steve Reed arrived at Labour conference with a slogan and a box of caps. “Build Baby Build” was the chant, stamped in cheerful red on the heads of delegates in Liverpool. The hats were easy to hand out. Houses are proving trickier.

When Camilla Tominey asked the Housing Secretary the most obvious of questions - how many homes have Labour managed to build so far? Reed discovered he’d left more than the number at home. He flapped, he dodged, he muttered about Tory failures and the planning system. Pressed again, he tried percentages: “Starts are up 29%.” Finally, in desperation, he sneered: “I’m not Wikipedia.”

That line will follow him around for years. Not knowing the figure was bad enough. Having the interviewer supply it - 117,390 homes in 14 months - was worse. At that rate, Labour’s 1.5 million pledge will take thirteen years, not five. But trying to turn ignorance into bravado? That was political self-harm.

The truth is this government prefers slogans to sums. “Build Baby Build” is the latest in a long line of conference catchphrases designed to make MPs feel good in the hall while quietly collapsing outside it. Ministers talk about planning reform, training construction workers, speeding up the system. All very fine, but irrelevant if the person in charge cannot say, off the top of his head, how many houses his government has actually delivered.

Housing is not a minor detail. It is the single issue that determines whether young people can build lives, families and businesses. If Labour wants to be taken seriously, it cannot keep blaming the “tail end of Tory failure” forever. Fourteen months into government, Reed’s excuses are wearing thin.

In politics, symbols matter. Those red caps were meant to conjure urgency and dynamism. Instead they look like props from a campaign that has already run out of credibility. The hats say “Build Baby Build.” The numbers say “Bluff Baby Bluff.”

Watch the exchange here: