"selling off social housing, which led to the situation we have with the housing shortage, and rapacious private landlords able to charge extortionate rents."

Due to rent acts and rent controls town and city councils could not afford to maintain their properties which were rapidly turning into slums and bankrupting those town and city councils creating economic stagnation and paralysis. Maybe they should have rebelled and ripped the rent controls up and charged realistic rents, but they didn't, their other route was to keep the rents as they were and then get those who owned their own homes to subsidise those in "social housing" which led to the ludicrous situation where a widow on a pension was subsidising a family consisting of four wage earners living in a council house not giving a toss about the fabric of the building or looking after it.