Last week the Labour Party shed two Chrises. On Wednesday, the whips suspended Chris Hinchliff MP, for persistent rebellions against the government. On Saturday, Chris Worrall’s defection to the Conservatives was announced by Simon Clarke on X – eight hours after Worrall himself had announced it to the social media site, though no one had noticed.
The Chrises are notable in being lightning rods on either side of ‘builders vs blockers’ debate. Chris Hinchliff became North Hertfordshire’s first Labour MP a year ago. He has been vocal against the government on the removal of the winter fuel allowance, agricultural property relief and welfare reforms, though has made a name for himself mostly through his ardent opposition to parts of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
Chris Worrall is the co-founder of Labour YIMBY, and has served on the executive of the affiliated society Labour Housing Group, is the former editor of the Labour housing blog ‘Red Brick’, and has been chair of the Fabian Society Local Government and Housing Policy Group. He is an entrepreneurial figure who wears many hats: he is a director at a real estate private equity firm, part of the team behind the podcast company “Left on Red Media” (best described as an attempt at a YIMBY Novara), involved with something called the “YIMBY Initiative”, and a confirmed vaping enthusiast.
The Chrises are known to each other: in the months before his defection, Worrall took to social media site X to allege that Hinchliff was part of the ‘vegetable lobby’ and to label him a ‘hedgerow Ayatollah’. It is not only Hinchliff who has felt Worrall’s ire: both Angela Rayner and Matthew Pennycook have been accused of being the ‘cabbage patch cabal’. From one of the founding figures of Labour YIMBY, the message was clear: if you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you’re not a builder: you’re a blocker.
It was last December that the Prime Minister announced he was backing the ‘builders, not the blockers’. This language was welcomed by pro-growth advocates and adopted by several cabinet members, along with a vigorous campaign against the ‘bat tunnel’, the ‘fish disco’ and other such structures built at the expense of the taxpayer. On the other side, nature voices including Chris Hinchliff accused the government of ‘giving developers a license to kill nature’, and led to Helena Horton of the Guardian declaring that the politicians were ‘bullying bats and newts’ (who, one assumes, remain blissfully unaware).
For many, the new language of YIMBYism was unnecessarily divisive – pitting Labour’s support base against each other, including within the PLP, where, since the election, many sitting MPs now represent rural and suburban constituencies which are more inclined to be development-sceptic. A frequent complaint was the characterisation of their constituents as ‘blockers’: a framing of retired National Trust members as enemies of the state. As prominent backbencher Polly Billington wrote in June – ‘we must resist the urge to paint local people as the problem’.
For long-time observers of the YIMBY eco-system, this rhetoric was unsurprising. Spearheaded by young and ambitious Labour members, predominantly very online urbanites who have been priced out of the housing market, they – spurred by Chris Worrall – formed Labour YIMBY in early 2024. Yet for all their enthusiasm, an articulation of what made them specifically Labour YIMBYs was lacking. As reported on by Morgan Jones in the New Statesman last spring, the YIMBY coalition is ideologically diverse, and yet its myriad parts seem unwilling or unable to articulate their USP in the space. Much of this unwillingness may stem from the fact that those who deviate from a sheer ‘build more’ mentality – those with concerns about, say, affordability, build quality, or minimum space requirements – open themselves up to the charge of ‘NIMBYism’.
For a while there was enormous value in the brash broad strokes of the YIMBY movement. Successive governments for the past half century have recognised that the planning system stymies growth, housebuilding and energy infrastructure – but have lacked the political will to do much about it. Even in wonkish circles, land-use planning was rarely seen as an especially sexy policy area, or treated as one necessary for a thriving state. The YIMBY movement not only put planning reform on the agenda, it made it a cause célèbre across the political divide, and we now have a Labour government willing to invest significant political capital in addressing it. In a sense, we are all YIMBYs now (and the robust response from the majority of the parliamentary Labour party to the Hinchliff amendments – coming out against proposals that would entrench the failures of the current planning system – would seem to support this contention).
If the polarising tactics of YIMBYism have achieved their ends, then perhaps it is time for a more serious conversation about what solutions look like, what trade-offs must be made, and what coalitions of support can be built and sustained.
A little over a year since the inauguration of Labour YIMBY, the Conservative YIMBY campaign was launched in early June 2025. Both with a penchant for merchandise – Labour YIMBY has stickers and lanyards, Conservative YIMBY has bright blue caps emblazoned with ‘Build Baby Build’ – the main point of difference between the two appears to currently be declaring themselves the true party of the builders and pointing fingers at the other. In the week of the Conservative YIMBY launch, with a leap of circular logic characteristic of this debate, Labour YIMBY co-director Shreya Nanda tweeted ‘If I were a YIMBY I would simply join a real YIMBY party’. If you didn’t know who Nanda was, you may very well think she was talking about the Conservatives.
The relaxed approach to partisan politics in the YIMBY movement means that it is possible for Chris Worrall to cross the floor with no discernable difference in what he believes or says. Whilst all issue-based campaigns make unlikely connections, even the most dedicated pro-growth Labour member should surely admit that this is an issue.
One of Chris Hinchliff’s core critiques of YIMBY advocates is the allegation that they serve as political mouthpieces for big developers. This rankles with Labour YIMBYS for whom it is a cause of social justice: to make affordable housing a reality for the many. Such YIMBYs also care deeply about tackling the developer-led model and ending practices such as landbanking and fleecehold models. Inside the tent, the prominence within the Labour YIMBY space of those with some variety of professional interest in development has raised eyebrows.
For Labour MPs, councillors and members who have experience with shoddy developers – from fleecehold issues to poor build quality – a totally deregulatory vision of housebuilding is not in line with their values. Yet within the Labour YIMBY movement, the space to voice these concerns and advocate for a progressive housebuilding movement often feels squeezed out by those spearheading the movement. Furthermore, the pugnacity of its moral purity – with us or against us – is not the way to build broad consensus (Neither, it should be said, is the accusation that a Labour government is ‘killing nature’ by Hinchliff et al).
It is absolutely true that Labour’s missions of clean power by 2030, economic growth and 1.5 million new homes need robust outriders and message carriers. But outriders need to lay the political groundwork, roll the pitch, and make it as easy as possible for a government to move into the preferred space – not simply attack government policy and adopt positions and values that are increasingly those of the opposition.
Before last July, the Liberal Democrats had held power more recently than the Labour party. Cummings served as No 10 chief of staff for two years, Simon Clarke was an MP for seven years, serving in both the Johnson and Truss cabinets. Sam Richards, CEO of Britain Remade, served as a No 10 SpAd in the last Conservative administration. It is of course correct that good cross-party working makes for better policy – but there is a difference between sharing a platform and ceding one. This is the first time Labour has been in government in 14 years, and yet there appears to be a lack of confidence in a Labour vision of how to fix the state; the economy; the housing crisis. Instead, Labour figures appear all too willing to defer to those who presided over decline for ideas on fixing their own mess.
We cannot trust the Sadiq Khan-hating Dominic Cummings-backed group ‘Looking for Growth’ to advocate for a Labour vision of growth, any more than we should trust the public affairs director of the Adam Smith Institute to advise the party on planning deregulation. Whilst the ambition – to build Britain back up, to grow the economy, to have new homes – may be shared, who Labour are delivering for is different. Unregulated development works for shoddy developers looking to make a quick buck, shirking Section 106 responsibilities and presiding over a race to the bottom in terms of quality, affordability and community benefit. It barely works for anyone else. We know this, because we have seen it in action for the last 14 years.
In contrast, Labour in power has committed to nearly £40bn to be spent on social and affordable homes over the decade. Commitments to renters reform and reforming leasehold arrangements are in train. The government has also removed the onshore wind ban, scrapped the 1m rule for heat pumps, and greenlit several major transport infrastructure projects that were stalled under the last government.
At the risk of introducing a third Chris; before the election last July, then-parliamentary candidate Chris Curtis wrote a blog for the Social Market Foundation on his vision for Labour’s New Towns. He talks not only of affordable housing, but infrastructure that allows residents better transport routes, sports centres and green spaces, all funded by developer profits. There is a Labour vision inherent within this piece – one which the Labour Growth Group, of which Curtis is now co-chair, has the potential to drive forward.
It is true there is far more to do to overcome the stagnation faced by this government, and as Labour drifts in the polls, and as MPs anxiously examine their own political futures, local opposition voices sound louder than they did last July. Labour must build more homes, more energy infrastructure and more rail lines – and this will require MPs to reason and disagree with their constituents from time to time. Personally, I do not believe that this requires Labour YIMBYs to conclude they have more in common with Simon Clarke and the Adam Smith Institute than they do with Labour colleagues who may differ on what exactly the trade-offs should be. The YIMBYs of the party must speak to a Labour vision for Britain, not shoehorn the word Labour into a pre-existing single issue campaign.
In the grand scheme of things, Worrall’s defection means very little – he will continue to criticise the Labour Party on GB News, possibly at some point stand to be an elected representative of the Conservative Party. But for the pro-growth wing of the party, it could stand as a moment of reflection, about who your bedfellows are and how friendly you’re willing to get with them.
Megan Corton Scott is the deputy director of the Labour Climate and Environment Forum (LCEF)