By Alistair McIntosh, HQN CEO

Happy New Year. Yes, it’s time for that annual upbeat optimistic blog once more. Luckily, I’m an old git so this is pretty easy to write.

According to the World Economic Forum, young people are down in the dumps, so there’s no point asking one of them to pen this. Why are they so pessimistic? Bluntly, too many young people can’t find a home they can afford to live in. That’s deep, as they would say. So, it’s good to hear that the government wants to build 1.5 million homes. But is that enough? Will young people fancy their odds of getting one of these homes? I doubt it. In an ideal world, the target would be set much higher to keep hope alive. Amazingly, some experts, who should know better, think that the bar is too high.

No sooner does Keir Starmer try to get to grips with a key problem than our doomsayers start griping. Who will build these homes? Where will they go? Is there any money to pay for them? These are all fine points. But we’ve all got to try a lot harder. If young people don’t spy the green shoots of homes they can afford to live in and raise a family, where are we heading? Dr Paul Morland on the Today programme says the birthrate is so low that we’re hurtling towards a ratio of one worker to one retiree. That can’t work. To all intents and purposes, it’s a Ponzi.

We’re simply not giving people a choice as to whether they have children or not. China deliberately opted for a one-child policy; we’ve accidentally created a no-child policy. And we can’t afford that. No country can.

The UK needs to give people grounds for optimism. If you’re looking for evidence of how divided we are, how about this: the Electoral Reform Society says that “we haven’t had a single party government the majority voted for since the 1930s”. At the last general election, about 60% of votes made no difference whatsoever to the outcome. It’s no wonder many get frustrated and feel they have no voice.

A huge housebuilding programme could give young people hope and liberate older people from funding the bank of mum and dad. Now, that’s a win-win to bring the country back together. One nation under a tongue and groove.