There were big promises, striking galleries, two new parliaments. But they made shocking mistakes, too

Christopher Wren was a great architect. His performance as an MP, in the 1680s and 1690s, however, was lamentable, a crumbling shack compared to the uplifting acropolis of his architecture. Ever since, politics and architecture have been awkward bedfellows. Politicians want bombast one moment – the Palace of Westminster, pre-fab tower blocks, the Greenwich Dome – and banality the next, especially when the financial going gets tough. Picture pretty much any building funded by a private finance initiative (PFI) over the past decade: bandage-thin new hospitals, tinny new schools.

One thing we can be sure of as we jostle towards a general election is that none of the major political parties has a handle on architecture or planning. Quite simply, there are too many interest groups involved. On the one hand, there are private developers and party-funding big businesses; on the other, a tangled web of quangos, rival government departments, snake-oil design consultants and local councils.

Planning in Britain has been treated as the merest of trades, while architects – even as they have become more businesslike – have seen their status drop, as so much building is now led by the construction industry. If I were to cast my vote solely on the basis of architectural and planning manifestos, no party would win it. The shocking state of our woeful and cynical new housing alone would stay my hand, while the wilful privatisation of our public realm would keep both hands firmly in my pockets.

New Labour bounded into office in 1997, committed to doing something about architecture and cities. After 13 long years of government-sponsored industrial decline, many of these, especially north of the Trent, look as if they have been through a war. Perhaps they have: Britain's interminable class war. Many a bold word was written in favour of "urban regeneration", notably Towards an Urban Renaissance, an optimistic government report championed by the architect Richard Rogers. I watched, however, in bemusement, then incredulity, as New Labour's Cool Britannia vision transformed too many historic city centres into gormless "regen" retail theme parks, as ill-suited to Birmingham or Liverpool as to Beijing and Mumbai.

Yes, new museums by big-name architects opened, and many historic buildings were renovated. Most of these, though, were beneficiaries of the Lottery launched during the "It could be you!" years of John Major's Tory government. Funds for such projects have dried up, leaving city centres prey to corporate developers, while the government and its quangos blather on about how New Jerusalem is just around the corner.

In a mind-numbing report, World Class Places, published last May under the signatures and beaming faces of Hazel Blears (since resigned) and Andy Burnham (moved on), we were told the government "is committed to improving the places where we live, whether these be villages or large cities". Everywhere in Britain was to become a "world-class place" – somewhere, presumably, along the lines of Birmingham's revamped Bull Ring or Las Vegas, Shanghai's Pudong district, or Sodom and Gomorrah.

Toronto, Barcelona, Barnsley

So excited with this idea was the new architecture quango Cabe (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), it commissioned Ian McMillan ("poet-in-residence for the Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC") to write a poem:

Think of them, the world class places: Barcelona, Barnsley, Ludlow,

Toronto; that walk from the station down to Newcastle's quay; plenty of flourish,

World class I reckon: world class.

Eat your heart out, William McGonagall. As for Cabe, set up by Blair's department of culture, media and sport, this tax-eating body barks fashionably about "sustainability" and good design, while robustly promoting the building of supermarkets in the very last of Britain's independent country towns, towns happy to be themselves rather than clown-like, retail-crazy "world-class places".

I know how powerless local people feel in the face of smooth-talking, unaccountable bureaucrats. Why do I know? Because Cabe wants an ugly and unsustainable Tesco built, despite opposition from the town council, chamber of commerce, schools and residents, on a beautiful, allotment-graced riverside site in my home town, Hadleigh, a happily self-sufficient backwater of rural Suffolk. With Cabe's help, its character and sustainable economy will surely be destroyed.

This playground bullying, by a government in thrall to big business, is key to understanding why our towns and cities have sprawled, why urban planning has come to mean property development on a brobdingnagian scale, and why the concerns of rural areas have been trampled underfoot.

Politicians of all parties, except Labour, are aware of the problem. "We aim to deliver power to local communities," says Ed Vaizey, canvassing in Wallingford, in his Oxfordshire constituency. "We'll push for planning development from the ground up. Developers and large corporations have been in the driving seat; we need to know what local people really want."

Vaizey, shadow arts minister, toyed with the idea of appointing, were the Tories to win, a chief architect to encourage more thoughtful development. He now believes such a role would be divisive, as an architectural tsar could favour a particular style of architecture over another, not a good idea in a pluralist society. So would Vaizey rely on Cabe for advice? "I've been a big fan of Cabe," he says. "It's a good idea in principle. In practice, it's too big, too bureaucratic.

"What we do want is expert advisers from a variety of backgrounds to help us understand local landscapes, their histories and identities as well as economic needs, so that we can ensure all places are treated with respect. We're well aware of how local councils are scared of the threat of appeals made by big developers they dare to reject."

Peter Phillips, very much in favour of localism, is one of three architects standing for parliament. Of the other two, one is Tory, the other Lib Dem. Phillips, however, is the BNP candidate for Windsor. "Does he design in the style of Albert Speer?" asks Vaizey when I tell him about Phillips. Well, no. The BNP's architectural message, I have to say, is not dissimilar to that of the Tories. "The BNP would reverse the increasing over-regulation and centralisation of government," says Phillips from his one-man practice in Surrey. "We'd get rid of the Homes and Communities Agency, the Partnership for Schools, Cabe and other unmanageable quangos. Centralisation of government, along with PFI and PPP [public-private partnership], has been costly and unhappy for architecture; local practices have been squeezed out from public-sector work funded in these new ways, with the result that architectural diversity has been diminished."

There's not much here a Tory candidate would disagree with, but then the more familiar face of the BNP reveals itself, as Phillips says: "Eighty per cent of our new homes are for immigrants, and this is one key reason why our towns are sprawling."

The Lib Dems are vague on the subject. A spokesman for Don Foster, culture secretary should Nick Clegg's crew win, says the great man will get back to me. He doesn't. Perhaps Foster is busy with his ukulele, which he lists as a hobby. Or maybe he is out in honey-coloured Bath – that battered and bruised architectural wonder, where he has been MP since 1992.

What I do know is that the Lib Dems would "slash" VAT on refurbishment, a move that would encourage the development of empty homes, especially in cities like Liverpool, where entire Victorian terraces stand boarded up. A Lib Dem government would also somehow retrofit every home in the country to the tune of £10,000 as part of a "pay-as-you-save scheme" (whatever that is); this means ensuring all homes are well insulated, whatever their age or style.

The party says it will protect the green belt, as would the Tories. It will abolish the new Infrastructure Planning Commission, a Soviet-style quango with powers to send nuclear plants, power lines and pylons to your neck of the woods whether you want them or not. Labour is in no mood to talk about such fripperies as architecture, development or planning. My attempts to speak to Margaret Hodge, Labour spokeswoman on architecture, were met with no response.

A jobless, car-bound subtopia

In terms of architecture and planning, the big problem with New Labour has been its almost paranoid need to centralise power and control events. This was evident from the start with the Millennium Experience, aka the Dome, a pointless, demeaning exercise that cost a billion quid and fell flat on its bloated face. While hype surrounded Lottery projects, and passionately concerned housing ministers came and went, cheap land – much of it floodplain – has been handed over to housebuilders so they can rush up the unsustainable slums of the future. This or that week's housing minister has barked on about headline-stealing "eco-towns" that were clearly a bad joke, a new form of jobless, car-bound subtopia.

"New Labour was never really interested in leaving an architectural legacy," says Amanda Baillieu, editor of Building Design. "But it was lucky enough to inherit a healthy economy from the Tories, and went on a spending spree. Sadly, all its 'acclaimed' public sector projects, like schools, have been hoovered up by big, commercially driven architectural firms. The bar's been lowered, not raised."

Among architects themselves, the vote seems to be split: figures from the Fees Bureau, a research group, suggest 32% will vote Conservative, 30% Labour and 27% Lib Dem. The parties might like to think more seriously about courting them, though no one expects them to have the subtlety of Christopher Wren. They might also think of public good rather than private gain.

As for our new housing, after a decade of bluster, profligate policy initiatives and relentless bullying, this remains a blight on the landscape, a stain on our collective soul, a national disgrace.