Should the Government embark on a massive programme of building council homes similar to post-Second World War?

A substantial majority backed a post-war-scale council-house programme, but the vote was not a simple summons to rebuild the past. Yes won on this platform, while the most-respected argument on either side proposed something more radical than traditional social renting: a Singapore-style system in which the state builds homes and sells them at cost.

That case began, “YES but not in the old fashioned way”, before calling for voters to “adopt the Singaporean version of public housing”. The replies were the only sustained constructive exchange on the page, with one Yes voter calling it “Very interesting” and another explaining how families could move between larger and smaller homes as their circumstances changed.

No voters offered a looser coalition of objections. One argued that “there is no money in the treasury” and that state purchasing costs more than the market; another said the priority should be “freeing up planning”. But much of the opposition turned instead to immigration and allocation, calling to “deport millions” or prioritise indigenous Britons, homeless veterans and long-established British passport holders.

That left the two sides talking past each other. Yes treated the shortage as a case for changing the state’s role in housing; No often treated it as a question of scarcity, entitlement and who should be admitted to the queue. Even the sharpest No observation — “There are millionaires in Kensington on subsidised rent for life” — was an argument for reforming access rather than against public construction itself.

The result therefore says Yes to a major building effort, but the debate’s most respected voice was already asking what council housing should become after it is built.