Left-wing comedians blocking new homes? It’s beyond a joke
Nish Kumar and James Acaster have joined a local campaign to halt the redevelopment of the Aylesham Centre in Peckham, writes Simon Clarke
It takes a special kind of irony for comedians who built their careers skewering middle-class hypocrisy to end up embodying it. Yet champagne socialists Nish Kumar and James Acaster, two of Britain’s most recognisable left-wing comics, now find themselves trying to stop new homes in one of London’s worst housing blackspots.
The pair, darlings of Radio 4 and fixtures of the liberal comedy circuit, have joined a local campaign to halt the redevelopment of the Aylesham shopping centre in Peckham. Berkeley Homes, one of the UK’s most respected housebuilders with a strong track record in urban regeneration, plans 867 new flats on the site. The scheme has become a lightning rod for every tension in the capital’s housing debate: affordability, bureaucracy and the cultural cringe of Britain’s comfortable left.
The Aylesham saga is familiar. Berkeley’s initial offer carried 35 per cent affordable housing, later reduced to 12 per cent as the economics of delivery deteriorated. Tired of council delays, the developer has appealed directly to the Planning Inspectorate, with the hearing due this month. Meanwhile a crowdfunded legal challenge has rolled on with celebrity backing and benefit gigs. None of it changes the basic arithmetic. Peckham is short of homes and long on rhetoric.
Brownfield land
The brilliant Neil O’Brien MP put it neatly: “Building houses on brownfield land in Europe’s biggest city? What a radical thought.”
Here is the context the celebrity campaigners will not confront. London’s housebuilding has entered a catastrophic slowdown. Only about 4,170 homes were started in 2024-2025, a collapse to less than five per cent of the capital’s 88,000 a year target. Completions in the year to June were roughly 30,000, miles adrift of need and falling. Southwark alone has thousands in temporary accommodation and a daunting waiting list. These are not abstract numbers. They are families squeezed into substandard rooms, renters spending half their income on rent, and young Londoners giving up on the city.
So, why has London stalled while the need has risen? Costs soared by more than a fifth in the early 2020s, finance tightened, and regulatory gatekeeping hardened after Grenfell. The Building Safety Regulator’s gateways have created long lead times. Second staircase rules at 18 metres have imposed heavy costs on the very mid-rise buildings London relies on. Layer on the London Plan’s cumulative policy burden and affordable quotas that often make schemes unviable, and you have a system that congratulates itself on “good growth” while delivering no growth at all.
There is a way out. First, adopt policies that lubricate mobility. Kemi Badenoch’s conference pledge to abolish stamp duty on primary residences is the most pro-ownership move any major party has put on the table for years. Scrap the transactions tax on family homes and you help downsizers right-size, free up stock, and cut the dead money that gums up chains. That is how you get the market moving again.
Second, build a political coalition that supports homes where people want to live. At Conservative Yimby’s conference programme we packed out a 300 plus Builders Rally and launched a candidates handbook that shows campaigners how to make the case for new homes on the doorstep and win. It is common sense politics for an overcrowded city: say yes to brownfield, yes to gentle density, yes to faster decisions with clear rules, and yes to viability that adds up.
London’s emergency is not a mystery. It is the predictable outcome of policies that made building slower, riskier and pricier while need surged. The capital will not be saved by another knowing comedy set or a fashionable hashtag. It will be saved by planning certainty, pro-growth rules, lower friction on transactions, and credible partners who can actually pour concrete.
Simon Clarke is director of Onward