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.
Alice’s White Queen could “imagine 6 impossible things before breakfast” the Greens can support 6 mutually contradictory policies at the same time
The Green Party make no secret of their insane (utterly insane) policies – they are, as Natalie points out, openly presented on their website.
Yet many Green Party voters, indeed Green Party members, are utterly unaware of the policies of the party they support. Only on Monday I overheard a conversation between two people who were denouncing the United Nations (and general international community) and its Collectivist Totalitarian agenda (15 minute cities and all the rest of it) – and these people were Green Party supporters (one of them was a Green Party member), they did not grasp that the party they support is committed (fanatically committed) to this Collectivist Totalitarian agenda.
I suspect this is common – people are supporting the Green Party not grasping that it supports precisely what they, many people who support it, oppose.
As for a Land Value Tax (and so on) – this is based on the false account of land presented by David Ricardo centuries ago.
The view of Ricardo on land (exposed as nonsense by Frank Fetter and others – more than a century ago) is as absurd as his Labour Theory of Value – refuted by Samuel Bailey, Richard Whately, Carl Menger and others.
The false Ricardian view of land led to the economic fallacies of Henry George, and the false Ricardian view of value led to the economic fallacies of Karl Marx – perhaps no other economist has had (unintentionally) so much bad influence as David Ricardo.
For example, the impact of Ricardo on James Mill and John Stuart Mill was very unfortunate – in spite of the fact that on some questions, such as monetary policy and trade policy, Mr Ricardo was CORRECT.
Greens are “Watermelons”
You remember what Gallagher used to do to watermelons, right?
For the younger folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxls1KnKCA4
William O. B’Livion.
Correct.
The leadership of the “Green” party does not love rural life and traditions – they HATE them (ask them their view of such things as hunting with hounds – or shooting), they (the leadership) are “Eco” Communists, they want Totalitarian Collectivism – which makes it grimly amusing to find small business owners and people who dream of running own farms (small holdings) supporting the Greens. The insane government spending they support is the final insanity.
Their popularity is testimony to a reply to the “but it takes only five minutes reading to see this is madness”.
“Yes Paul – but five minutes is a long time, and reading is hard”.
It should be no surprise that the leader of the Green Party, a person from a Jewish family who accuses Jews of “genocide” in Gaza – thus inverting the truth – as it is the enemy who wishes to exterminate the Jews – not the Jews who wish to exterminate the Muslims, is from the “Liberal Democrats”.
“Liberalism” has become utterly inverted – whereas it was once about self reliant families, it now supports the international Corporate State (for example the European Union), whilst it once stood for moral conduct – it now supports every vice and degeneracy, and whilst it once supported rolling back government spending and taxation – it now supports increasing them, till society is utterly destroyed.
As the late F.A. Hayek pointed out – when he, Hayek, was a boy – liberals around the world revered men such as John Morley, these days they do not know who John Morley was and, if they did, would despise his opinions – just as they despise the opinions of great liberal minded (in the old sense of “liberal”) men such as John Bright.
From Grokipedia:
Classical liberalism is a political philosophy advocating individual liberty, limited government, private property, free markets, and the rule of law as essential to human flourishing. It posits that governments should protect natural rights—life, liberty, and property—while minimizing interference in voluntary exchanges and personal choices. Originating in the Enlightenment, this ideology draws from first principles of reason and empirical observation, emphasizing consent of the governed and skepticism toward arbitrary authority.
Modern liberalism really does seem inverted. Perhaps modern liberals whish to undo the Enlightenment and revel in a dark Romanticism.
They even outright lie when asserting their policy.
Abolish Landlords!
My local council would be destroyed if their residential property was given to all their tenants.
No, we mean Abolish Private Landlords.
My housing association would be destroyed if their residential property was given to all their tenants.
No, we mean *PRIVATE* landlords.
My housing association *IS* a private landlord. It’s not owned by the state.
Large chunks of the banking sector would be destroyed if all those mortgages suddenly had no assets backing them and the borrowers unable to pay the repayments.
And what happens to the incompetent druggie who now has to cope with building maintainence?
They don’t really want to abolish landlords, or bosses, or owners.
They want an upset that leaves THEM as the landlords and bosses and owners.
That’s always been the basis of communist revolutions.
You peons will have a better life when I’m in charge!
(Or I’ll shoot you.)
@ Dan Souter:
“the road to the Gulag always has the same signposts.”
And, per Irma Bombeck:
“Well may the grass be greener over the septic tank.
But the grass is always greenest over the mass graves”.
Discovered Joys – it is even worse than you suggest, the pre Enlightenment Middle Ages had private property rights – the leadership (the leadership) of the “Greens” (who are not really Greens at all) hate that principle. They want tyranny – total and absolute tyranny.
jdh – yes.
bobby b – you assume that someone like “Zack Polanski” is motivated by money and the desire for a comfortable life, if-only-that-were-so (as Dr Johnson said “a man is seldom so innocently engaged as when he is after money”) – such people are not really motivated by money (for all their absurd-sounding get-rich-quick schemes – such as making the breasts of women supposedly grow via hypnotism, which was really about making weak minded people THINK their breasts had grown – which is actually not so absurd after all), they are not, in the end, even motivated by the desire for power.
Their true aim is as Bruce suggests – the desire for destruction, the desire for destruction and death.
“Zack” (David) is not really a stupid man – he knows very well that his policies would lead to mass death, but to him (and to the Legion of people like him) that is not a bug – it is a feature.
I’ve encountered anti-landlord types on Facebook before. When I ask what incentive exists for building new apartment complexes if leasing property is abolished, they tell me that would-be occupants can band together collectively to have one built.
Alan K. Henderson – such a cooperative is not the real objective.
The international agenda is for housing to be controlled by the state – and by partner-corporations such as BlackRock.
The anti-landlord types on Facebook aren’t agenda-setters. They are armchair nobodies who have as little influence as I do. Co-op apartments is the scheme some of them come up with when I ask what incentive there is to build new multi-unit housing. It’s a scheme rife with problems: the challenge of organizing that many people to plan and agree upon a single construction project, the likelihood of significantly dissimilar credit ratings among the people, construction time, what to do if people want to move elsewhere.
Alan K. Henderson.
I agree they are not agenda-setters – they are puppets of the forces of the international agenda. Ask them and they say they hate (really hate) entities such as BlackRock – yet they serve these interests (without knowing it).
Cooperative housing is not the agenda – government (and partner-corporation) controlled housing, is the agenda.