We now have a new housing minister, Margaret Beckett, having returned to the backbenches and her predecessor, Caroline Flint (she of the transparent brief about home ownership crisis), also resigned but with rather more to say about the treatment of women in the cabinet. The new guy – yes, it’s a man – is John Healey according to the BBC website, who appears to have had a previous interest in housing, having written a chapter with Ed Balls in a rather dubious collection published by the Smith Institute, Affordable Housing; their chapter is called “Housing and the UK economy – Building a progressive consensus”, to which all I can say is good luck in producing that progressive consensus in the current economy and the time you have in office.