Labour hopes its grand housebuilding push will reduce prices – something sorely needed for many young people who cannot afford to buy or rent. Relative to annual earnings, housing has not been this expensive in England and Wales for well over a century. Meanwhile, planning approvals are at the lowest number since records began in 1979.

“The number of houses that are constructed is much more closely aligned with GDP than it is with the wishes of politicians to get them built,” says Peter Bill, a housing author and journalist.

“The complex and unpredictable planning system, together with the limitations of speculative private development, is responsible for the persistent under delivery of new homes,” it concluded after a one-year study into whether the big housebuilders control the market.

“The only way you’re going to get anywhere near 1.5m homes is by pouring billions of pounds into the construction of homes for poorer people,” argues Mr Bill.

For most of the 20th Century, councils played a big role in building housing, delivering up to 80% of homes in some years, but between the 1980s and 2000s social housing delivery plummeted as governments opted for privatisation.

Sir Keir Starmer told reporters last night that Labour officials going to the US to campaign are “doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there”.