Expect calculated electoral politics at the heart of every policy announced on Wednesday as the Chancellor attempts to engineer a budget bounce and recover his party’s tarnished reputation for economic competence.

Michael Gove has today (13 February) told councils to look again and prioritise house building on brownfield land. As part of the announcement he has instructed ‘big city’ councils to ‘turbo-charge’ their brownfield housebuilding agenda to help meet the 300,000 new homes a year target as set out in the 2019 Conservative manifesto.