Ask most people what they associate with Milton Keynes and they are likely to mention roundabouts, concrete cow sculptures and the fractious move of Wimbledon FC to the town in the early 2000s. To Angela Rayner, however, Milton Keynes offers a blueprint for the future. In a speech on Tuesday, Labour’s deputy leader laid out plans to build a new generation of Milton Keynes-style “new towns” to ease the housing crisis and boost the economy. “Labour’s towns of the future” will feature green spaces and good transport links, and 40pc of homes will be classed as affordable, Rayner promised. “We can turbo-charge growth to the benefit of working people across Britain,” she said. In seeking a plan for the future, Rayner was reaching into the past. Milton Keynes was conceived by Harold Wilson’s Labour government as part of the third wave of new towns built to alleviate housing shortages in the wake of the Second World War. Plans for a 250,000-person Buckinghamshire town, built on 8,850 hectares of farmland, were approved in 1967. Wilson’s gamble paid off: nearly 60 years later, Milton Keynes is a thriving city. But experts warn Labour’s attempts to replicate such success today are doomed to...