Right to Buy – the totemic policy of Thatcher years – has never lost its lustre for Tories

Selling off homes worked for the former PM, writes Andrew Woodcock, but will it deliver the same magic for Johnson?

The UK needs more housing stock (PA Archive)

Boris Johnson is not the first Conservative leader to invoke the words “Right to Buy” in the hope that some of Margaret Thatcher’s fabled gold dust will rub off on him.

The sell-off of council homes was perhaps the most totemic domestic legislation of the Thatcher years, playing a role even greater than that of nationalisation of state-owned industry in transforming British society.

Introduced in 1980, it was credited with attracting a whole new sector of society to the Conservatives, spreading their appeal beyond the affluent middle classes and into aspirational working families who saw it as a step up the ladder to a more comfortable and individualistic way of living.