A plague on all your houses

TetleysTLDR: The summary

Britain’s housing crisis is being fuelled by landlord MPs, especially in the Labour Party, who profit from the very system they claim to be fixing. Homelessness Minister Rushanara Ali evicted tenants to hike rent by £700/month, exposing the hypocrisy of a government filled with landlords.

Decades of Right to Buy and failure to rebuild social housing have left millions at the mercy of a brutal private rental market, where tenants are priced out, forced to find guarantors, and live in ex-council flats for luxury-level rents.  MPs won’t really fix the housing crisis, because doing so would hurt their own wallets. Until landlord-politicians are removed from policymaking, a roof over your head will remain a commodity for profit, not a human right.

TetleysTLDR: The article

Britain’s housing crisis isn’t a bug in the system. It is the system, for over 40 years it has been rigged, cynical, and stitched up by the very people who claim to be solving it.  At the rotting heart of this national scandal are our honourable Members of Parliament - not just bystanders to the crisis, but landlords profiting handsomely from it.  

Take Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP and, no, this isn’t satire, the actual fucking minister for homelessness and housing. Recently, Ali evicted her tenants from a townhouse in East London and re-listed it for £700 a month more from £3,300 a month to £4,000 a month. The excuse? She was supposedly selling the place. Until she wasn’t.  And then suddenly there it was, back on the market for a sky-high rent. 

Those tenants, it turns out, were just a human inconvenience on her balance sheet.  Never mind that the new Renters Reform Bill that she is putting through Parliament would’ve likely made it harder for her to pull that stunt, she got in there just in time. Sharp, that one isn't she?  Ali’s case isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a symptom of a deeper rot.  MPs across parties declare rental income on the Register of Interests, over 115 of them at last count.  That's nearly a fifth of our elected representatives with a second income as a landlord.  But it’s the Labour Party, the supposed voice of working-class Britain, [yes I know, it gets more ridiculous everytime I read it back too] that’s slathered itself in the most sanctimonious hypocrisy. They weep for the renters while cashing rent cheques in the background.  

Ilford South MP Jas Athwal, another Labour man, was accused of renting out mould-ridden, ant-infested flats and then threatening tenants when they dared to complain. That’s not representation that’s racketeering that would have made Rachman blush. 

Then There's Manchester MP Lucy Powell, In 2021, she publicly denied being a landlord, stating she only has a lodger, not a tenant. However, commentators pointed out that rent from a lodger still counts as landlord income.

Linda Riordan, former MP for Halifax was involved in the 2009 expenses scandal.  She rented out her London flat to another Labour MP while simultaneously claiming expenses for renting elsewhere, a move deemed technically permissible but ethically questionable. 

It's all a fucking merry-go-round to this twats.

So what's the history here on how we got into this god awful mess. The rot began 4 decades ago when Thatcher’s Trojan Horse Right to Buy was sold to working-class families as a route to security.  But 13 years of Labour under Blair and Brown made no attempt whatsoever to replace the sold-off council housing. The result?  The nation’s stock of social housing was handed over to private landlords, many of whom now charge extortionate rents for what used to be council homes. Then there's 

That 1960s estate you grew up in? It’s now 'luxury flats' on Zoopla: yours for £2,200 a month and a guarantor who earns £60k.  Let’s pause there: Guarantors. Another racket that boils my piss:  Agencies now routinely demand a personal finance referee as a condition of renting. They aren't legally required to do this, in fact they may be teetering on the boundary between what is lawful and what isn't - If you don’t have a middle-class mum with a mortgage, or a best mate with a six-figure salary, you can kiss your housing prospects goodbye. You’ll be left renting a shoebox on Facebook Marketplace from a man called Dave who communicates solely in emojis and keeps your deposit in a sock drawer.  It's as obscene as being credit checked for accommodation, which those little treasures in Estate Agents do routinely in blatant breach of the Consumer Credit Act - as no credit is involved and all rents are paid in advance. But they all still do it. 

Og course, there are lots of MPs with financial interests in the housing market, so no legislation on the horizon to here reign in these besuited charlatans. 

This is how broken the system is.  Rents have outpaced wages, deposits are eye-watering, and standards have nosedived. Tenants have no bargaining power, no protection, and no chance of building a future. And yet we are told, with straight faces, that help is on the way: by a government filled with landlords, ex-landlords, and wannabe landlords. 

This isn’t just greed. It’s a glaring conflict of interest.  How can we expect MPs,  who collect rent every month from the system as it stands, to be the ones who fix it?  Affordable housing?  Rent caps?  Rights for tenants? These things are directly contrary to their personal financial interests.  If the rental market were fixed, they’d lose income. Of course they won’t fucking fix it.

You might think this is mostly a Tory problem. And yes, the Conservatives treat property portfolios like Pokémon cards.  But what makes Labour’s complicity so grotesque is the betrayal.  These are the people who claim to stand up for the poor, the vulnerable, the priced-out. And yet here we are: the Homelessness Minister herself acting like a property speculator. 

The reality is this: Britain’s housing policy is not designed to house people. It’s designed to enrich landlords. That’s not a policy failure. That’s the point.  And it’s why we must ask: how can any of this be meaningfully addressed when someone like Rushanara Ali, who evicts tenants and hikes rents, is the one charged with fixing homelessness?  What credibility does she, or for that matter any other MP with property interests have when it comes to solving a crisis they directly benefit from?

We are being governed by people who see homes not as a right, but as an asset class. The market has been let off the leash, and working people are being savaged. The only thing trickling down is contempt and piss on the poor.  

So no, we don't need another consultation paper or empty pledge. We need a root-and-branch purge of landlord-MPs. We need rent caps, mass council house building, and a legal recognition that housing is a human right, not a casino chip.  

Until then, every time you see your rent go up, your agency ghost you, or your housing application rejected for lack of a guarantor, just remember: your MP probably owns three properties. And one of them might be the flat you just got priced out of.

A plague on all their houses? Too fucking right.

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