What do the appointments of Trump and Badenoch mean for the industry?

Since my last offering, the Conservatives have appointed a new leader and the United States has appointed a new president elect.

In the end, Donald Trump won almost everywhere. What did that teach us? It taught us that while he may not be the most attractive personality you’ve ever encountered and while he may say some very odd things on almost any subject under the sun, he will be good for business and promises to do something about illegal migration.

His opponent, despite being a significantly more attractive personality and spreading love wherever she travelled, appeared to campaign simply on not being Trump. There was no detail as to what a Kamala Harris presidency might do that was not simply a continuation of Joe Biden’s policies, which as Americans were acutely aware had led to painful levels of inflation and a massive increase in national debt.

All the celebrity endorsements – from the Obamas, the Clintons and even Liz Cheney – counted for nothing. Trump not only won convincingly but is the first Republican to win the popular vote in more than 20 years. We’ve got him for the next four years and the UK government’s job is to get alongside him as convincingly and as quickly as possible. While he may indeed prove good for business, his belief in the value of import tariffs is bad news for UK exporters.

Back home, Kemi Badenoch won a three-way contest and has so far not dropped the ball. Her supporters admire her willingness to speak her mind and her clarity of thought. Her detractors worry that she will be just too strident and alienate the very voters who deserted the Tories in July and who the party desperately needs to return to the fold. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves’ budget has not exactly won many plaudits. The business people who were so impressed when she was telling them how much better a Labour government would be for them than the awful Tories are now biting their teeth as the impact of the rise in National Insurance and the massive increase in government borrowing become clear and the prospect of further rate reductions recedes.

The government claims to be pro-business and pro-worker. With the greatest respect, you can’t be both. Without business, there are no workers and it is wages that fund taxes to a far greater extent than any other source of government income. There are worrying signs that this administration sees the public sector as more important than its private counterpart. The overwhelming majority of businesses in property or piemaking know the opposite to be true.

That said, Angela Rayner, now installed as boss of MHCLG and charged with delivering 1.5 million new homes in five years, has clearly determined to approve applications that find their way to her desk, and her commitment to reversing Michael Gove’s inexplicable decision to abandon mandatory land supply targets is very welcome. Her problem, as Badenoch pointed out during their first encounter at the Despatch Box, is that a third of the way in to her first year, she has yet to deliver a single new home.

Given the urgent need for new housing for a burgeoning population, her most urgent priority must surely be a radical overhaul of the planning system. The current model defeated the dozen or so ministers during the Tory years.

The party that gave us the 2008 Planning Act now needs to be even more radical if we are ever to build the numbers we need. We should wish the deputy prime minister well as she grapples with the inevitable resistance not only from Tory MPs but from her own side too. For the sake of those tens of thousands throughout our country who currently subsist in appallingly inadequate housing, she deserves our support.