I don't know what a coup d'état in Britain would look like. Presumably, the belligerents would simultaneously seize Whitehall/Parliament, the BBC and GCHQ amongst other institutions.
But my intuition says that Michael Gove will somehow be involved. Not that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities would initiate a violent overthrow of the government, merely that he'd swiftly make himself indispensable in the new administration. He always does.
Today, Gove delivered a keynote address on housing and announced what he says are reforms that will unlock a new generation of home building, including proposals to prevent councils from delaying planning applications indefinitely but also making it easier for councils to veto new developments on the greenbelt. It is safe to say that today's speech has not impressed everyone.
Partly because it contained a direct attack on Sadiq Khan. As our chief political correspondent Rachael Burford reports, Gove threatened to strip the Mayor of London of his planning powers if he did not agree to a review of house building in the capital.
Khan hit back, blaming Conservative ministers for "regularly intervening to block new building in London" while City Hall produced figures suggesting construction in the capital outstripped the national average. Tom Copley, deputy mayor for housing, suggested that Gove had "capitulated to Tory backbenchers by allowing their councils to wriggle out of housing targets".
There is certainly variation in London when it comes to house building. In the six years since 2016, Labour boroughs in the capital have delivered an average of 7,312 homes. That is 50% more than the average of 4,860 homes delivered in Conservative-run boroughs.
Time for a sit-rep. The 2019 Conservative manifesto committed to building 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. The government's own figures show that new houses (or 'net additional dwellings') peaked in 2019-20 at just under 250,000, falling back to fewer than 235,000 in each of the last two years. You may recall that proposals to introduce compulsory housing targets were jettisoned last year to placate unhappy Tory MPs.
Further back in time, Gove was a prominent member of the David Cameron government, whose housing policy was essentially to help a small subset get on the ladder through schemes such as Help to Buy, which also happened to inflate the market for those already happily ensconced.
If the polls are anything to go by, this will soon be a Labour problem. Keir Starmer says his party would build 1.5 million homes in the next Parliament as part of an ambitious programme of new towns. But elections deliver new governments, not new voters. Starmer will be stuck with many of the same problems his predecessors faced on planning, including fierce and well-organised opposition from local residents, local authorities and his own backbenchers.
Meanwhile, house prices remain well above their pre-pandemic levels and rents continue to soar. As a result, the best advice remains unchanged: if you want to get on the housing ladder, pick your parents carefully.
In the comment pages, ugly, vulgar and a climate catastrophe — we should ban SUVs in London or tax them to the max, urges Anna van Praagh. Melanie McDonagh says we must take away Michelle Mone's title and ban her from the Lords. While comment editor Robbie Smith reflects on a year of strong views from the Standard's columnists.
And finally, yikes. Two restaurants inside the historic Old War Offices in Whitehall have been given one-star hygiene ratings by inspectors.
