With a slashed majority and a possibly imminent change of leadership, New Labour is looking distinctly wobbly. What better time, then, for the opposition to start playing party politics with housing and regeneration - especially now that being anti-development is such a vote-winner? New labour had a taste of political mortality at this year's general election. The poor results in the South-east have been noted at Labour HQ where the party's number crunchers have carried out a detailed analysis of the extent to which development had an impact on results. Regenerate understands that the analysis shows that anti-development campaigners, such as Kettering's new Conservative MP Philip Hollobone (see "The fear card", page 21) tended to perform better than average. And the swing against Labour was even bigger in the growth areas than in the rest of the region. The names of many of its losses, like Kettering and Wellingborough, sound uncannily like a roll call of the areas earmarked in John Prescott's communities plan to boost housing supply across the region. Campaign to Protect Rural England planning director Henry Oliver says: "We understand that No 10 is very worried about the results in the growth areas - and so they should be."
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