From The Guardian:
Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have dismissed a call by their Liberal Democrat colleague Vince Cable to restrict the second phase of the government's Help to Buy mortgage scheme to areas of the country with depressed property prices.
In a sign of tensions over the economic policy at senior levels of the party, Clegg and his close ally Alexander rejected Cable's warnings that Britain was facing a dangerous housing bubble.
Does not compute.
The justification for Help To Buy was that houses are too expensive and so first time buyers have to be "helped". The very existence of the scheme is the government's tacit admission that house prices are in a bubble.
If prices were "affordable" by whatever measure, then there'd be no need for such schemes. So Cable's idea about restricting it to "areas of the country with depressed property prices" is even more stupid than Clegg and Alexander's state of denial - because people don't need help to buy a cheap house.
The only way that any of this makes sense is if "Help To Buy" is in fact "Help To Sell", then it makes perfect sense from the point of view of a Home-Owner-Ist government trying to win a general election from a majority Home-Owner-Ist electorate.
H/t Alan at HPC.
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