Free market! London housing!? The politicians are all getting second homes funded by the taxpayer. The banks went bust but got bailed out by the taxpayer. "Emergency" low interest rates for the last 5 years.

The UK / London housing market is anything BUT a free market.

Not sure you understand quite what free market means.

I know that many of the banks would not be around if we had true free market conditions.

I agree, and the banks should have been allowed to fail. There should not have been any bail out. But that's a completely different argument to the one of "is there cheap enough housing".

I don't believe that there can be such thing as a free market in housing. Supply is controlled, necessarily so, by the regulation of land.