Two-faced Labour yimbys are nimbys in private after all

ANGELA Rayner vowed to take on the nimbys stopping new homes being built, so Cabinet pal Ed Miliband must be number one on her hit list.

- Sam Lister

Windy Mili, who wants to cover the countryside in turbines, is against luxury flats being built in his leafy neighbourhood.

Or, to be specific, wife Dame Justine Thornton, a Labour campaigner and High Court judge, has written a letter of objection to the development.

She said the five-storey block of flats was "too tall, too bulky and too dense given the context of the surrounding houses and the wider conservation area".

Maybe there is a genuine split on the issue in the Miliband household over whether it should or should not go ahead. It's hardly unheard of for husbands and wives to disagree.

But it comes to something when a Cabinet minister who has vowed to take on the "blockers" cannot persuade his nearest and dearest that a tiny local development is a good thing.

Rayner cannot be best pleased. She has made it her mission to deliver 1.5 million new homes by the next election. Apparently so serious and urgent is the need for new housing and infrastructure that some of the nation's green belt must be sacrificed.

It was only back in March that the Communities Secretary pleaded with MPs to "back the builders" rather than the nimbys when she introduced the legislation in the Commons.