A second-homes levy! Holiday cottages threat! Buy-to-let hammered! Great, I say: speaking as one of the targets, I throw my hat in the air and urge other parties to join in. Britain needs to kick the habit of confusing human dwellings with money trees.

Ours is, as the prime minister keeps saying, a wonderful country. We must elect leaders to nurture our wonderfulness. But none of the contenders will get anywhere without fixing one glaring problem: the broken housing market. Without that, most reforms are lipstick on a pig — pointless, irritating and temporary.

It is not just a matter of building, greenbelt and brown, private and social. That’s obvious. Shelter’s estimate is three million units needed within 20 years. More than 320,000 people are