Rachel Reeves is doomed if she fails to fix 1 problem killing economy - it's not pensions

Full disclosure: I'm a YIMBY - or "yes in my backyard!". The fictional Coketown of Charles Dickens' Hard Times - with all its machinery and tall chimneys and red-brick buildings everywhere - sounds like my kind of paradise. It was towns like Coketown, after all, that made Britain truly great in the 19th century.

Give me the hustle and bustle over the cosy countryside any day. So imagine my horror to read Labour will miss its target to build 1.5 million homes by the end of the decade. In a letter to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Home Builders Federation said the quango's house building forecasts were too optimistic, blaming taxes and low demand. The impact on growth will be dire.

Houses not built means lower productivity, worse inequality and higher housing costs. It would be easy to pin all the blame onKeir Starmer and his cadre of clowns in the Cabinet. No doubt, they deserve some stick for failing to deliver their manifesto promise. But the failure to build new homes is not a new problem.

For decades, politicians have failed to lay down bricks and mortar, often because they are terrified of losing a few votes to local NIMBYs (not in my back yard) who hate the thought of any and all change - regardless of the benefits to the UK as a whole.

Until Westminster and local councillors find a backbone and start siding with builders, not blockers, the UK will continue paying the price of high rents, low growth and a generation locked out of ever owning their own homes.

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Furious locals in Sandbanks are at war with local millionaires after a beach was fenced off. The beach used by dog walkers for decades has now been turned into a bonafide fortress, complete with security camera and motion sensors.

Angry residents have rightly called the move an oppressive land grab. Any decent neighbour would let their fellow locals enjoy a stroll on the beach without making a huge fuss.

We could learn from Greece, which demands free public access to beaches by law. They even require most beaches to be free of sunbeds to bars taking up too much space.

It's about time Sandbanks and other UK seaside towns enjoyed similar freedoms.

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Liz Truss was on top form when she visited Daily Express HQ last week. The former prime minister pulled no punches as she took on the deep state, Rachel Reeves's dire economic record and the UK's embarrassing image abroad.

Mrs Truss has come in for a lot of flak. She has been compared to a lettuce, nicknamed the "human hand grenade" and blamed for the disastrous state of the UK economy by her critics.

They could not be more wrong. Listening to Truss speak, at length, about her vision for the economy, I came away deeply impressed. She was right about everything from tax to energy and migration.

Viewers said it was about time Truss returned to frontline politics. I can't help but agree with them.