J ohn Healey’s critics on the right and left accused him of dodging the big questions in his first budget . The chancellor failed to announce reforms that might tackle some of Britain’s chronic problems, they say.

Healey’s scatter-gun budget, as the Resolution Foundation called it, was more about politics than economics, and unapologetically so.

Housing was one area of policy that took up a considerable chunk of his speech. And yet the measures amounted to very little, if a test of his policy changes was to ask how different will the UK be at the next election. Or, as that date is only two and a half years away, 10 years from now.

Housing is more than a single element of a complex economy. It is both its driving force and a disease eating its way through the body, from the inside out.

More than 80% of global investment is in property and the vast majority of that is in residential.…