The June 2017 general election was the political event when two trends of differentiation that had been gaining importance in the past twenty years really came to the fore: intergenerational difference and age-related inequalities, and the political differences between the devolved administrations in Britain. The issues which dominated political discourse in the election were age-related: the costs of social care and quality of the health service for older people, and student debt and unaffordability of housing for young adults. The election was an occasion when ‘generation rent’ found its political voice. Meanwhile the political currents moved in different directions; towards the Labour Party in parts of England, more strongly in Wales, and away from the SNP towards Labour and especially the Conservatives in Scotland. The notion of anything approximating to a consistent swing of political support across the United Kingdom has probably gone forever.

In this context the publication of a book which examines the politics around housing, and explores the increasingly distinctive paths in housing policy being taken across the United Kingdom, is most timely. The author, Brian Lund, suggests housing has a higher political salience now than at any time since the 1970s. Indeed, one might be tempted to reach back still further. The competition between the main political parties to buck the downward trend of the past forty years and dramatically increase the number of new homes to be built in the future is redolent of the 1950s – when the ‘numbers game’ of hitting building targets, as part of post-war reconstruction in its most literal sense, was at its height and when the promises of how many houses would be built were the litmus test of any party's overall political programme.

The book is pitched at readers with a general interest in social policy, social history, political science and urban studies, rather than the housing specialist. However, it is not a generic housing text book. Instead it reads more as a rather idiosyncratic companion volume to general texts on housing policy, such as Lund's own Understanding Housing Policy, recently republished in a third edition. So I think any volume of this kind needs to bring to the table issues, themes or conceptual frameworks that help to contextualise and step back from more breathless chronologies of housing policy development in the past century. The book's subtitle conveys the framework adopted by Lund, though one is tempted to think that the alliterative allure of ‘power, planning and protest’ perhaps counted for more than its analytical coherence in addressing the subject matter covered.

Let's look at the three themes in turn. In addressing ‘power’ Lund refers both to the formal political system and to governmentality, the techniques that regulate or order behaviour, perceptions and desires. This approach is reflected in the least satisfactory of the ten chapters, which is unfortunately the first, ‘Housing and Politics’: it canters through ‘Globalisation’ in two paragraphs, and Capitalism in under two pages, which is rather less space than given to ‘think tanks’ a bit later. It is an unsteady amalgam of description and historical snapshot which does little to illuminate what follows. And if we really wanted to know that the Liberal Party was formed in 1859, for example, we could have found this in a glossary or appendix rather than in the leading chapter. Lund does not return to the more interesting question of governmentality in housing policy until the Conclusion, which is a shame. The mantra of the ‘property owning democracy’, which has sustained post war housing policy discourse, especially in the Conservative Party, is now in retreat. Given the end of what Forrest and Hirayama (Reference Forrest and Hirayama2015) have called the ‘social project’ of expanding home ownership, what can replace it to mollify the masses? Unfortunately, Lund does not follow this question through.

On the second theme of ‘planning’, Lund covers various initiatives introduced to moderate the influence of the private market. This includes an interesting discussion of the politics around an issue often neglected in classic accounts of housing policy: land. The book is at its best when it draws attention to policy actors who are often marginal figures in other accounts – such as the land reformer Henry George, active in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Lund also points out that state-sponsored initiatives to modify market outcomes in policy areas such as urban renewal often neglect to consider the voices of those affected most – those losing their homes and displaced by the redevelopment process.

This focus leads to the third theme – that of ‘protest’. Lund describes this as involving the ‘outsiders in the political system and their attempts to secure a voice and perhaps eventually become the power holders’ (v). This is, potentially, a very productive approach, as an antidote to those ‘top down’ accounts of housing policy development which unfold through a ceaseless litany of manifestoes, white papers, legislation and statutory instruments. In these narratives, the ‘real world’ only intrudes briefly – through routine mention of the first showing of ‘Cathy Come Home’ or perhaps the Clay Cross rent strike in 1972. Does Lund therefore help reveal these ‘hidden histories’, as he claims? Unfortunately we get only passing mention of tenant protests and campaigns over the years, such as the challenge to Housing Action Trusts in the early 1990s. Admittedly, material is scarce and often inaccessible, but more mention of opposition and protest over the years – for example, against the transfer of council stock in Birmingham and Glasgow, or in the recent campaigns in London against redevelopment and gentrification – would have been a valuable counterbalance to the ‘insider’ accounts that prevail elsewhere.

Where this book is at its most enlightening, even entertaining, is in the excursions Lund makes into various historical byways while tracing the main developments in the housing system. Lund has a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of his subject, as evidenced by the diverse and eclectic bibliography, and his comments made in passing to inform or illustrate a particular issue are often more illuminating than the underlying narrative. If one is interested in a more sustained account that offers perspective on the detailed chronologies of UK housing policy over the years, I would still advise reading Stuart Lowe's (Reference Lowe2011) excellent The Housing Debate as the first port of call. But if one wants a pot-pourri of scattered historical insights as a reference source to embellish more focussed accounts of housing policy change, this book would certainly be worth dipping into.