Dean Conway has written a supportive article for Central Bylines about the Green Party’s eye-catching new housing policy:
Green Party policy ‘Abolish Landlords’: solving the housing crisis
The Green Party’s ‘Abolish Landlords’ policy could end the housing crisis with a number of measures that will benefit tenants
“The Private Rental Sector has failed”, reads the Green Party’s statement to ‘Abolish Landlords’ motion, adopted as party policy at October’s Green Party Conference. Key elements of its plan to tackle the UK’s endemic housing crisis include:
Abolishing Right-to-Buy legislation and introducing Rent Controls. Levying more taxes on landlords, including Land Value taxes and national insurance on rental income. Ending Buy-to-Let mortgages. Subsidising councils to buy back properties that have not been insulated to EPC rating C or have been vacant for more than six months. Speaking to Alex Mace by email, Worcester City’s Green Party councillor and co-sponsor of the motion, he told me that ‘Abolish Landlords’ “takes actual concrete steps to solve the housing crisis that are largely how our original stock of council homes were built through the 50s, 60s and 70s”, including establishing “a state-owned housing manufacturer … to deliver housing at scale”. While the motion does not actually outlaw landlordism, it “seeks to make it significantly less attractive to be a private landlord”.
I’m getting a “defund the police” vibe. Tell the base that the slogan means exactly what it says, while telling the rubes that it doesn’t, with scope to row back on either position when convenient.
By the way, here is the Greens’ policy on migration, as stated on their website:
The Green Party in government will:
Implement a fair and humane system of managed immigration
Treat all migrants as if they are citizens
Give all residents the right to vote
Help families to be together
Dismantle the Home Office
Abolish the No Recourse to Public Funds condition
Abolish the ten year route to settlement
Stop the profiteering from application fees
Stop putting people in prison because of their immigration status
Accept our responsibility for the climate emergency and support the people forced to move
That policy would increase the need for rented housing rather a lot.
So, yet another rerun of “Death to the Kulaks”, but the new member for Gorton & Denton is a house flipper and sometime by-to-let landlord, so they can’t really mean it.
You’d think people would have learned by now that the road to the Gulag always has the same signposts.
First they came for the billionaires, and I did not speak out—because I was not a billionaire. Then they came for the landlords, and I did not speak out—because I was not a landlord. Then they came for Reform, and I did not speak out—because I was not a member of Reform. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
Apologies to Martin Niemöller.
Dan,
Excellent point. I’m not even sure she’s actually even a plumber… I think she sells heat pumps or something.