There is a housing crisis across Britain and its effects are felt most keenly in London.

Rents are rocketing out of control. Properties are being subdivided into ever tinier shoeboxes.

Even sheds and garages are being pressed into service as illegal housing as landlords spy an opportunity to squeeze ever-greater profits out of tenants.

So why are local authorities being allowed to tear down hundreds of vitally needed council homes to replace them with a handful of flats aimed at the super-rich?

The planned demolition of Earl's Court follows hot on the heels of the shameful destruction of the popular Heygate estate in south London.

The Heygate, which once provided decent homes to more than 3,000 council tenants, is being knocked down in the name of "regeneration" and replaced with homes for sale at eye-watering prices far beyond its former occupants' reach.

There is the usual feeble nod to "affordable" housing but the aim is clear - to drive out working-out class people, make the area a playground for the rich and hand a fat profit to developers.

Exactly the same is afoot in Earl's Court, where the Tory councils are eager to drive out council tenants and make a quick profit from the Russian and Middle Eastern money which is helping inflate London's housing bubble.

Councils have been driven to embark on these firesales of valuable property by recent Con-Dem cuts which have left huge holes in their budgets.

But those are just the latest in decades of disastrous Tory housing policy.

Tony Blair's Labour shamefully failed to reverse Margaret Thatcher's attacks on council housing or her abolition of rent controls.

And today - not just in London but in cities all across Britain - we are paying the price in soaring rents, ever-growing overcrowding, misery, squalor and homelessness.

The Tories aren't just failing to confront those problems - they are actively encouraging them.

London Mayor Boris Johnson's carefully cultivated buffoon persona conceals a cold-eyed neoliberal delighted by the sight of hundreds of ordinary Londoners driven from their homes to clear the way for private profit.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is more interested in destroying communities than defending them.

And meanwhile at a national level Tory housing policy, like Tory economic policy, is so foolish and destructive it's impossible to tell if the government is acting out of malice or incompetence.

It was always obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that George Osborne's help-to-buy scheme would be a disaster for the people who actually need help with housing.

All it does is pump more air into the ever-inflating bubble - putting home ownership even further out of reach of most people.

It's an obvious bribe to wealthy Tory voters in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

But what has Labour got to offer instead? Millions of people are crying out for a return to the days when decent, affordable council homes were available to all who wanted one.

Ed Miliband needs to be bold and stand up for those millions. No mealy-mouthed talk of "social housing" or housing associations, no half-hearted gestures like requiring a handful of "affordable" homes to be tacked on to vast developments aimed squarely at the super-rich.

But a massive programme of building good-quality council homes right across Britain, publicly owned, democratically controlled and at rents that undercut the private-sector profiteers.

Only that way can we beat the Tories' efforts to bring back the Victorian slum to 21st-century Britain.