Britain has a problem. We invent the future, ARM, DeepMind, Graphcore, Wise, Revolut, then sell it at a 60% discount to American buyers because no one here will pay up.
Our pension funds and ISAs are legally barred from taking risk. Our richest asset class (residential property) is artificially scarce, politically untouchable, and returns 7-8% a year nominally while productive startups fight for scraps.
The result: £2-3 trillion of British household wealth is locked in an asset that produces zero jobs, zero IP, and zero productivity growth. Housing has become Britain’s national hedge fund, and it’s crowding out everything else.
Time to end the madness.
Not with timid tinkering (another Help to Buy, another stamp-duty holiday). We need a deliberate, engineered demonetisation of housing as a store of value. Crash its investment premium on purpose, then capture the freed capital and force-feed it into British equity, venture, and industry.
Call it The Great British Unlock.
The Four Fatal Flaws (quick autopsy)
- Housing is unaffordable because we refuse to build enough of it. Every other “solution” just pumps prices higher.
- Investors have nowhere else to park money long-term. UK property rights are bulletproof (Land Registry = hard protocol), so domestic + foreign capital piles in, deliberately keeping supply low to protect scarcity value.
- UK capital markets are uncompetitive. Why list on LSE for 8x revenue when NASDAQ gives 20x? Why stay independent when a US giant offers 2.5x? British savers prefer gilts and buy-to-lets to backing British founders.
- An entire generation was lied to: “Go to university, avoid the trades.” Now we have classics graduates on zero-hour contracts and a chronic shortage of plumbers earning £60k+.
The Great British Unlock (2026–2032)
One government, one parliament, one big bang.
- Double housing supply in six years
- National Development Act: every site within 800 m of a station or inside urban boundaries = presumed residential consent.
- Permanent office/retail-to-residential conversion.
- 10% annual land-banking tax on undeveloped residential-zoned land.
- Zero VAT on all building materials and renovation for five years.
- Target: 500k+ net additions a year. Real house prices fall 25–35% over a decade.
- Rebuild Britain Corps: opt in national civic service for 18–24-year-olds
- £25k tax-free + accommodation + student debt relief for three years building homes, grid, factories.
- Make trades cool again. Prince William in hi-vis laying bricks. Arsenal sponsoring apprentices. TikTok flooded with British kids actually building Britain.
- Force the capital reallocation (the real killer move)British ISA: £1m lifetime tax-free allowance, but 100% must be in UK-domiciled equities or private companies. No overseas stocks, no REITs, no bonds.
One-off £500k extra top-up window (2027–2029) for anyone downsizing their home + zero stamp duty on downsizing trades. Simultaneously cap standard pension annual allowance at £30k from 2028. The message to boomers: sell the spare bedrooms, or pay tax. Your compensation is a £1m ticket to British growth.
Pension funds: tax relief only if ≥25% in UK equities/PE/VC by 2035.
LSE sandbox: dual-class shares permanent, 10% free float for sub-£500m caps, zero stamp duty on all UK share trades forever.
Entrepreneur’s Relief 2.0: any company <£2m revenue = zero corporation tax, zero business rates, zero employer NI for five years (ten if you export).
Political Sequencing & Messaging
Year 1 (2026): Pass the National Development Act + launch Rebuild Britain Corps. Visible cranes everywhere, kids in hi-vis on the news every night — popularity rockets.
Year 2–3 (2027–28): House-price growth stalls → media panic → launch the £1m British ISA and downsizer bonus. Frame it as “compensation and opportunity for the older generation who built this country”.
Year 4+: Prices falling in real terms, pension funds buying UK growth stocks, IPOs returning to London, youth unemployment collapses.
The Payoff
House prices stop being a national religion and become, well, boring again. First-time buyer deposits collapse from 100% of annual salary to ~30%. £1–2 trillion shifts from dead bricks into live British companies. Cost of capital for UK firms drops 300 bps overnight. FTSE doubles, but more importantly we get a new generation of £5–50bn British tech/industrial champions that never sell out early.
The establishment will call this insane. Reckless. An attack on property rights.
Good. Everything else has failed.
Britain has tried being the polite, house-price-obsessed museum country for forty years.
Time to become the country that builds like Singapore, takes risk like America, and keeps the upside like China.
Demonetise housing.
Monetise the future.
Who’s in?