Do you know what a housing association is? Could you explain what housing associations do? To be fair, they come in many shapes and sizes, so they’re not susceptible to a summary description.

The oldest, the descendants of medieval almshouses, were created in the 1800s to provide decent accommodation for factory workers during the industrial revolution. The newer ones were created as a result of Margaret Thatcher taking housing away from local councils in the Eighties. The largest have tens of thousands of properties; the smallest only a few dozen. Some are superb at what they do — building new homes and providing affordable rented accommodation to needy families — some, frankly, are poorly run.

But at a time when the biggest social and economic crisis facing our country is a lack of affordable houses in London and elsewhere these are the facts to keep in mind. Housing associations built one in five of every new homes built during the last Parliament.

As private house-building collapsed by 37 per cent in the crash between 2007 and 2009, associations increased their output by 22 per cent. In total, housing associations provide about 2.5 million homes and house more than 5 million people in England.

In other words, these charities continued to build new homes as developers fled during the bad times and they provide homes for millions who cannot afford to buy property themselves.

So why has the new Conservative Government decided to wage a war of attrition against housing associations?

Five years ago I dissuaded the Conservatives in Coalition from fiddling with social rents to cut the housing benefit bill because it would have had a disastrous effect on the ability of housing associations to raise the money to build new homes, which was the key priority at the time. A few years later Danny Alexander and I agreed to a cut in social rents — obviously welcome to those paying rent — as long as associations were given a clear guarantee of rent levels for the next 15 years so that they had a stable revenue stream from which to borrow the millions of pounds needed to build new homes. It was, like so many deals struck in the Coalition, a sensible balance in the end. Yet within weeks of assuming power this year the Conservatives tore up that “guarantee”, undermining their financial stability.

The Government is now compelling housing associations, under a quaintly termed “voluntary” agreement (voluntary, that is, under the threat of legislation), to surrender properties under its Right to Buy policy. By forcing them to sell off their housing stock the Government is effectively nationalising charitable assets.

During my five years in Government I was often bemused at the random bugbears that my erstwhile Government colleagues seemed to share: single mothers, on-shore wind farms, the European Union were all constant targets of Conservative ire, as were housing associations. No doubt a Conservative could point out a similarly ramshackle collection of likes and dislikes among Liberal Democrats. But the apparent Government vendetta against housing associations is particularly peculiar because they fit the Big Society dream, exactly the kind of thing that compassionate Conservatives used to praise.

The Government seems to behave as if every family will, eventually, own a home. But that is not the society we live in Nick Clegg

They provide a valuable public service without direct reliance on the state. Margaret Thatcher once described them as “a marvellous invention” — no wonder, as she had a pretty big

hand in inventing them, at least in their modern form.

While the early associations, such as the Peabody Trust, which runs a host of estates across London, were born of the Victorian philanthropic movement, it was Thatcher’s Eighties housing revolution that created a new wave of associations that dominate the sector today. She didn’t want the state to be running things it didn’t need to so she presided over a massive transfer of housing stock from council ownership to this new class of pseudo-private organisations.

For nearly three decades housing associations have been the footsoldiers of a Thatcher-inspired drive away from state-owned housing. So why are the Conservatives now turning against organisations created in their own image?

The answer, I fear, is base politics. A senior Conservative once asked me, genuinely perplexed, “Why are you so keen to help housing associations, they just house Labour voters?” This crude political calculation is coupled with a sincere, and in many ways admirable, belief in the virtues of home ownership. That is why the Government’s housing announcements over Right to Buy, starter homes and so on are all aimed at helping those on the verge of home ownership but do nothing for the millions who have no chance of buying their own home.

For all I know it may be true that families who live in socially rented accommodation vote more for Labour, and those who own their homes vote more for the Conservatives. But this issue is too important to be decided on one of Lynton Crosby’s spreadsheets.

The reality is that there will always be people who need to rent rather than buy and many of them will never be able to afford a market rent, so we need to help them. The Government seems to behave as if every family will, eventually, own a home. But that is not the society we live in. Simply wishing away the problem is to abandon of many working families who need help to rent a home.

Much has rightly been made of the embarrassing contradiction between the Government’s rhetoric in favour of working people and its slash-and-burn approach to working tax credits. Its quiet assault on housing associations, and socially rented housing as a whole, is just as egregious a betrayal of working people in Britain today.