Mick Clifford: Housing tsar fiasco shows Government lacks urgency to tackle housing crisis

The Brendan McDonagh debacle proves what many suspected: the Government talks crisis, but governs as if there’s none

The lack of urgency has persisted throughout the housing crisis.

Any tsars out there at a loose end? The farrago over the now-abandoned appointment of Brendan McDonagh as housing tsar illustrates more than anything that there is no emergency in the housing crisis. 

There is no recognition that this is the issue that could fracture the social contract. No clue that the whole thing has the potential to lead to the rise of the kind of populist politics spreading across the world. There is no urgency.