This is the column I am supposed to write; it’s all part of the Tory game plan. The Conservatives’ proposal to flog off housing association homes has nothing to do with meeting people’s urgent and increasingly desperate housing needs.

The aims are threefold. First, with home ownership at a three-decade low – thanks to the government’s failure to build homes and, ironically, the legacy of right to buy – the Tories bank on tenants believing this policy could be their only chance to buy a home, turning them into grateful Conservative voters. Second, it is great news for private landlords: in one London borough surveyed, around 40% of homes sold off under right to buy have ended up under the ownership of a private landlord, and one lucky beneficiary is the son of Margaret Thatcher’s housing minister, who owns more than 40 ex-council properties. And third, it is intended to provoke a backlash from Labour and the left that allows them to be painted as anti-aspiration, with columns such as these.

Let me put my cards on the table. I am one of Britain’s 11 million private renters. We are forced to rely on a largely unregulated, often rip-off sector to meet that basic human need, shelter. We are disproportionately young, but the number of families unable to get social housing or own their own home in the sector has soared, leaving them paying high rents and often depriving their children of stability and security. Private renters spend on average about 30% of their income on rent, but in many communities and particularly London it’s nearly half, and in some boroughs, two-thirds of average incomes. I am paid more than most people my age, and yet the idea of becoming a homeowner seems fantastical. In the early 1990s, nearly two thirds of Britons aged between 25 and 34 owned their own home; it’s now down to less than 45%.

So – to be blunt – I am in no mood to be lectured about aspiration by the Tories. For young people who do not have rich parents to splash out on deposits, Tory policies mean handing over a large chunk of their hard-earned cash to a landlord. That’s what the Tory policies of “aspiration” – selling off social housing and encouraging booming house prices – have done for millions of British citizens.

As the National Housing Federation point out, housing association tenants “are people already living in good secure homes on some of the country’s cheapest rents … To use public assets to gift over £100,000 to someone already living in a good quality home is deeply unfair.” The privately renting neighbours of housing association residents, forced to spend years paying far higher rents, will wonder why they are not granted the same choice. Why indeed don’t the Conservatives give private tenants a discount to buy their homes? Ah, but that would of course provoke incandescent rage among private landlords who – appropriately enough – are set to reward the Tories for their generosity by voting for them en masse. It would also be regarded as an unacceptable infringement on the sanctity of property rights – a sanctity not awarded to housing associations.

There are currently 5 million people trapped on social housing waiting lists. They have aspirations, too: for a home they can afford to live in, to look after themselves and their families. Even more Britons will be denied those aspirations as Britain’s precious social housing stock is shrunk some more. Thatcherism lauded right-to-buy as a key means to roll back the frontiers of the state. How ironic, then, that it actually prompted the rapid expansion of the state in a different form. As homes with social rents vanished, growing numbers of Britons were forced to pay higher private rents that were often unaffordable. And so the state had to step in, spending billions of pounds in housing benefit, a de facto state subsidy for private landlords charging rents people cannot otherwise afford to pay.

The government will of course protest that the proceeds of housing association sell-offs will be used to build new homes. Because these sell-offs are of course discounted, the government will throw in a subsidy funded by forcing councils to sell off expensive properties. This is social cleansing, as simple as that. A friend of mine knows one of the architects of this policy, who long complained that middle-class professionals such as himself could not afford to live in nice areas currently inhabited by the poor. That is their real motive. It will mean council housing is even more residualised – that is, the preserve of only the poorest. And in any case, the new homes are to be “affordable housing”, one of the most Orwellian phrases introduced into the British political lexicon. In London, an “affordable home” can mean up to 80% of market rents, beyond the reach of the average tenant.

The state had to step in, a de facto subsidy for private landlords charging rents people cannot afford to pay

Will this cynical, politically bankrupt ruse work? Polling for the National Housing Federation suggests just 16% of voters believe the policy “would be the most useful way of tackling the affordability crisis”; just 27% thought it “would be a good use of taxpayer money” and only 35% believed they should have “the right to buy their home at a government-funded discount of 30%”. Interestingly, Ukip voters are more likely to regard the policy as unfair. But the Tory calculation is it will be attractive to enough key voters in marginal seats to succeed where demonising Ed Miliband and baiting immigrants and unemployed people has failed, and ensure they form the next government.

Some housing association tenants may well be swayed, although the polling finds that just 39% believe it is fair they are given a discount when private renters are not. But I ask them this: where will your children live? We are building less than half the housing we need. Social housing is being destroyed. Home ownership is in retreat. This policy will help drive house prices even higher, drive ever more into the private rented sector, and leave many Britons in desperate need with no homes they can afford to live in. It will trash people’s aspirations, not reward them. The Tories are desperate to win the election, at any cost. And the cost of this policy is great indeed, and will be paid by millions of us for a long time to come.