THE Tories are making election promises about getting more houses built, especially cheaper homes for the less well-off. But the last five years tell a different story.

Luxury property is booming in London. There are huge profits to be made selling or renting accommodation to “high-value” people — oligarchs, bankers or just the rich. 

But there is also a housing crisis. Thousands of ordinary people struggle to even rent in London. Buying throughout Britain is beyond many people’s reach. 

This contradiction is getting political as pressure mounts on the government to do something about housing. 

Mansion taxes, planning permission, more social housing, even rent controls are entering the political conversation. 

The Tories have done little to resolve the housing crisis so far. And there are two big reasons to think that the Tories won’t deliver on thin promises about more modest homes after an election — those two reasons are money and jobs. The luxury property business is throwing money and jobs at the Conservative Party to preserve the profits they make from a dysfunctional housing market, where too few houses are built for too high a cost.

Luxury developer Marcus Cooper Property gave the Conservatives £100,000 at the end of May, according to the latest figures released by the Electoral Commission, which monitors political funding. 

Alongside the Regent’s Park Mansion, Marcus Cooper’s other developments include a 28-apartment block in Regent’s Park, the cheapest of which costs £1.1 million. 

Entrepreneur Marcus Cooper, who founded the firm in 1991, described these apartments as “contemporary, elegant living in this exclusive triangle of London.” 

Cooper and his firm have given £65,000 to the Conservatives in the past, but this latest donation is a major increase. 

Cooper is far from alone. Just before Christmas Bruce Ritchie and his wife Shadi Ritchie each gave £47,500 to the Conservatives. 

Bruce Ritchie runs property firm Residential Land, which specialises in high-end lettings in London.

The Ritchies’ firm is currently offering studio flats “perfectly located within the heart of Chelsea” for £350 a week. 

As well as the very high rents for a very small space, they offer “many features which are associated with a Chelsea lifestyle,” including “an onsite porter” and a location “just moments from the fashionable restaurants of South Kensington, Knightsbridge, and Sloane Square/King’s Road.” 

Their company is also offering studio properties off the Fulham Road in Chelsea for £450 a week, described as “a genuine lifestyle choice.”

With the party funded by these luxury property tycoons, it is no surprise the government is not focusing on the needs of the less well-heeled. 

The Ritchies’ donation might have been spurred by an anti-mansion tax campaign launched by estate agent to the rich Trevor Abrahamson and Watford Tory MP Richard Harrington. 

The two gathered “65 of the richest people in the UK — including Russian oligarchs and multimillionaires from the Middle East” at a West End restaurant to launch the anti-mansion tax campaign, according to the Daily Mail. 

Harrington urged the millionaires to “donate to the Conservatives” to kill the mansion tax — a call which preceded the Ritchies’ £95k donations. 

Abrahamson’s own estate agency firm Glentree gave a more modest £12k in 2013. 

As well as money from the Ritchies, the Tories get cash from a “Mr Rich” — Rich Investments Ltd gave the party £20,000 in January 2014. 

This company, owned by Peter Rich, has given £194,000 to the Tories over the past 10 years. 

His business “is a property investment and development company that is primarily active in the residential and retail property market of the Holland Park and Notting Hill area of west London,” which it describes as “one of the most exclusive areas in which to live.”

That’s the money. Then there are the jobs.

A former member of Cameron’s Cabinet is selling London flats — at £30m a time.

Lord Strathclyde — full name, the Right Honourable Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, or Tom Strathclyde to his friends — was until January 2013 one of Cameron’s more senior Cabinet ministers. 

Strathclyde was Cameron’s leader in the House of Lords and had been on the Conservative front bench for 25 years as both a minister and opposition spokesman. 

He left government in January 2013. In June 2013 he became a “senior adviser” to the Battersea Power Station Development Company. 

This Malaysian-owned development company is turning the iconic London power station into luxury flats and houses. The first flats went on sale for £30m. 

In May the company sold £500m of flats in the development within a matter of days. 

The cheapest properties were studio flats at £800,000 each. 

Only a very small number of “affordable homes” will be built and the first won’t appear until “phase three” of the development some years in the future. 

The Daily Express called Strathclyde’s development a “ghetto for the rich” attracting the international jet set and “keeping local buyers out.”

An ex-Cabinet minister is helping to sell expensive flats. And another senior Tory MP has taken a part-time job helping rich people to buy them. 

Banbury MP Sir Tony Baldry has been a member of Parliament for over 30 years and was once a personal assistant to Margaret Thatcher. 

Baldry has taken a new part-time job for £60,000 a year — almost as much as his MP’s salary — as an associate director of Werner Capital. 

This firm offers a “real estate advisory service” to “high-net-worth individuals” — that is, it helps rich people buy houses. 

Baldry’s employer focuses on Russian oligarchs, offering them “prime or improving locations we know well, such as London,” that have a “significant capital appreciation potential.”

Jobs and money from the luxury property industry are swirling around the Conservative Party — money from businessmen who profit from high prices and short supply in housing. 

Low-income people who might want to live in a council house, perhaps while saving for a deposit on a modestly priced house, by definition cannot chuck hundreds of thousands at Cameron in exchange for a quiet word over a nice dinner. In 2010 Cameron complained about the “far too cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.” 

The relationship between his party and luxury property money seems very cosy in 2014.