Some thoughts on Right Yimbyism

We want to build, but not like the other guys

In recent weeks, Conservative Yimbyism has gained some momentum. A proper campaign group has been launched, hoping to bring together the formerly rather loose and predominantly online groups that have tried to hector the party into committing to building more houses.¹ It mirrors the left and Lib Dem groups that have had some success in dragging their parties towards reforming planning and being more relaxed about house building.

It is perhaps a belated move from the right. The Conservatives largely squandered their time in opposition to tackle the housing crisis. The political reasons and consequences of this are apparent. If your support primarily comes from the already adequately homed owner occupiers (and often outright owners), every short-term electoral incentive is against it. Your voters benefit from ever-higher prices and lose out if building “blights” their local area. But, eventually, you run out of electoral road.

The Conservative collapse has many reasons, but the housing crisis must be a central one in why their vote among the young, even the high-earning young, has fallen away. Years spent paying off landlords’ mortgages do not a capitalist make. Nor does paying through the nose to buy a place in a bit of London your older colleagues would never have even set foot in. The cost of housing, and all the associated things that go with it, are an obvious bar to the flourishing of Conservative voting among the young.

Changing that is going to require a profound reckoning within the party. Nimbyism is the default response in much of British politics. Councillors and MPs are often instinctively against any building, fearful of its electoral consequences. Even many of the Tories who profess an interest in solving the housing crisis come up short when it comes to proposals in their areas, or broader reforms that would dilute local vetoes over development.

Getting the Tories back into building also means understanding why it matters, and what right-wing Yimbyism looks and feels like. When the Tories increased home ownership in the past, whether through Macmillan’s building programme or Thatcher’s right to buy, it was not just driven by electoral expediency. It was rooted firmly in Conservative thinking and values. That helped make it matter beyond those who were the immediate beneficiaries. It also won over some of those who might, in the short term, lose out.

Finding this foundation is also essential for formulating policy. The Yimby cause is by no means homogeneous. There are well-articulated left-wing approaches to it. These, to a greater or lesser extent, seek to use left-wing processes and achieve left-wing ends. For those on the right, there is much that we will disagree with. It is essential to offer an alternative, with a vision that embraces the market, private property and personal independence. Formulating a coherent approach is a necessary step in trying to convince our political allies and, in turn, the public to get on board.

To start with, right yimbyism must be focused primarily on ownership. Conservatism should be about the extension of property-owning democracy, the stake in the markets that ownership means, and the personal responsibility and independence that come with it. The primary goal should be to make home ownership cheaper. Reducing rents is an ancillary goal. More social housing is at best a tool, rather than a desired outcome. That is partly what separates it from the most left-wing visions.

The liberalisation of planning should also be couched in pro-enterprise terms. The Conservatives should not be hostile to developers, but supportive of them. Their aim should be a properly functioning market, rather than the present system, where sluggish and expensive provisions favour the most prominent developers. Enabling housing ought to be about allowing builders to open up the market for new entrants and for levels of competition that drive design and quality improvements. This should be about supporting a private sector that delivers for its customers and having a regulatory regime that facilitates that. After all, the TCPA is perhaps the last lingering bit of Attlee’s socialism.

Right Yimbyism should also mean understanding and supporting the advantages to the wider economy. Beyond housing, it should be about supporting businesses that need to build, rather than blocking them. It should also be about redirecting money that goes into rent and land costs towards more productive areas of the economy, whether that is within companies or individuals who have more cash to invest in themselves or others. The Conservative case for building more should be vocal, that it is an embrace of capitalism and growing the economy.

We should also be clear that it is about giving people the freedom to live how they want. Due to the age and circumstances of its participants, the Yimby movement is often overly focused on flats in urban centres. A Tory housing movement must go beyond that. It should recognise that people want the freedom to choose family homes—spacious ones, with gardens and drives. Simon Cooke is a thoughtful advocate of this, as is his desire for more suburbia. It is often overlooked by many in this space but ought really to be a goal of those on the right: building not just homes, but opportunities and communities.

There should be a sense of building places that are worth preserving and inheriting. Functional towns and spaces that cultivate community. Places that integrate the old and the new. Rooted in the sort of quality and design that can transcend the decades. This means encouraging building well and beautifully, but less by restriction, and more by diluting the other costs, and clipping away the weird rules that lead to perverse design decisions. People should be trusted to know what they want, and developers should be forced by competition to deliver it.

Right Yimbyism should also be sensitive to some of the arguments about localism. The idea is not to completely overwhelm local decision-making, but to direct it effectively. The current system of de facto vetoes is proving itself to be unsustainable. Instead, local government should be entrusted to guide the delivery of houses, rather than being given a simple block or not. This is a political necessity, quite frankly, but it has to be phrased in the right way. Getting local bodies to look at where things are built, how, and what wider benefits flow to the community is far more helpful than giving them the ability to reject every site, and more feasible than riding roughshod over them.

This underpinning flows into the types of policies the right should be advocating. Zoning systems make more sense than our current ones. Areas should be set aside for housing, rather than taking each application as it comes. It stops a free-for-all, but also gives clarity. They should be backed with slimmed-down design codes, which encourage good design without silly rules on windows. The right sort of designs could be given priority, with a pattern book for properties with close to default approval. Local authority funding should also be reset in ways that mean they benefit from a growing population and economic activities. There is a lot that can be done in a Conservative way; the challenge is finding the will to unleash it.

Most of all, the right yimbyism should be enthused with the moral mission of getting houses built. Abundance is its own reward. The Conservative Party should always be about making people richer and building up their living standards. Evangelists for growth. Economic growth, but with a vision which absolutely includes housing. We should be unashamed of declaring that the goal is bigger houses, better houses, where people can take advantage of space and quality to have richer lives. We should set ourselves up against the alternatives of miserable degrowth or zero-sum rationing. The right YIMBY message should be that you can have more.

The right YIMBY message has a long way to go. The party has chased the thrill of nimby voting for a long time and is only just waking up to the electoral hangover. Really, it is a double blow. Not only have the Tories seriously endangered their future electoral prospects, but they have also handed Labour the chance to change things, which means left-leaning targets and approaches. If the right is serious about solving the housing crisis, it cannot simply oppose these. It has to offer an alternative, rooted in right-wing thinking.

Right Yimbyism, then, is not just a policy stance, but a political sensibility—rooted in the conviction that growth, ownership, and freedom still matter. It is a belief that markets can serve people when given the space to work, and that beauty, space, and security should not be rationed luxuries. It’s not about rejecting state involvement out of hand, nor mimicking left-wing models in new clothes, but about building in a way that reflects a distinctively conservative faith: in enterprise, in responsibility, and in the quiet dignity of owning something that’s yours—a home, yes—but also a stake.

1. I am on the exec of the Conservative Yimby group, but everything here is my own views, not theirs.