How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to gloat over this one?
Will Hutton, Britain’s foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant.
No, you don’t get it. Will Hutton is a foremost critic of capitalism for people other than Will Hutton.
Mr Hutton’s wife heads a company called First Premise, which owns and manages dozens of commercial and residential properties in London.
The company specialises in renovating rundown properties – often with the help of public grants – and then makes a profit by selling or renting them out.
The disclosure that Mr Hutton’s own family is among those capitalising on Britain’s property boom will be an acute embarrassment for him.
Nah, he will just dismiss it as a ‘right-wing conspiracy’.
The Left-wing commentator, who appears regularly on BBC television and writes in The Observer newspaper – which he used to edit – has often railed against the iniquities of the property market.
He has been particularly scornful of what he believes is Britain’s socially divisive obsession with owner occupation. Property developers, people who buy to let and middle-class families who live in gated communities have all come in for criticism.
He is trying to shame them out of their well-appointed homes so that he can snap them up on the cheap and re-sell them.
Will Hutton, eh. The High Priest of Pieties. The Sultan of Sneers. The Prince Regent of Redistribution.
Makes you wonder how many other capitalist skeletons are rattling away in the Guardian closet.
Oh, you don’t have to look far. Mr Hutton has long been the prophet of the new corporatism, however much he’s been feted on the left as one of them for what looked to economic imbeciles like bold and original criticism of ’80s greed’.
The strange development of The Industrial Society initiated under his leadership–while I’d say it has been true to his own vision–has perhaps been a disappointment to many of his fans.
No, you don’t get it. Will Hutton is a foremost critic of capitalism for people other than Will Hutton.
Oh, now I get it! Just like Diane Abbott and Harriet Harman are the foremost critics of private education for children other than their own!
It gets better, in September 1996 First Premise tried to get Lottery money for a development in Twickenham under the guise of funding a “Palace of the Arts”. The Lottery refused funding. In 1999 they came up with a new development; this was unveiled in January 1999, to general public consternation: 39 flats, 6 restaurants, an unspecified number of shops, a 450-seat auditorium, and three cinemas, all with very limited parking. Not a very socially aware project.
Local societies and associations persuaded the Council to put the scheme to public ballot. A meeting was also held in St Mary’s Church in Twickenham on 19th January, 1999, at which the majority of the 400 local people present made clear their opposition to the scheme. Ah well, finally the local council threw First Premise off the development.
Still Mrs Hutton as a member of the ruling class is a member of the ‘Policy Action Team’ headed up by Patricia Hewitt with the Social Exclusion Unit. At £950 to rent a one bed flat on Deptford High Street from Mrs Hutton that’ll be trebles all round. Cheers!
Ah… the Guardian/Observer journalists and “leading commentators”… Champaignesocialists and caviarrevolutionaires! It’s VERY easy to rant about the evils of capitalism and how wealth should be distributed when you actually are living in the lap of luxory! I especially liked the comment , “The hypocrisy we’re in, huh?” that came from one of Mr. Huttton’s Observer collague. Keep up the good work Telegraph… there’s plenty more revelations out there…
I dunno’,I thought his book “The State You’re In” was very apt.
I’m so glad to hear that we’re not the only ones with (what we call) “limousine liberals.” But I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal the phrases “champagnesocialists” and “caviarrevolutionaries…” Those are TOO funny!
p.s. LOVE Samizdata…
The Spectator had an article on this very topic about over a year ago, if my memory is right.
Hutton’s star as a sage has been fading for some time. He droned on and on in the 1990s about the dreadful short-termism of Anglo-Saxon style equity finance, so inferior to the ways of Germany or Japan. And yet as his first book The State We’re In was published, his theories were already looking to be in deep trouble. The British and American economies have left the stakeholder mixed economies of Europe and Japan in the dust, though the Japanese seem to have taken a lot of smart decisions lately.
Hutton is vastly overrated. A pity in a way because on a personal level he struck me as a perfectly charming fellow.