Plastic Labour

From even before the parliamentary elections, when no one from the Labour Party would make any mention of introducing a wealth tax, I knew this Party was lost.

"Voting for Labour nowadays is like driving one of those Chinese-made MGs. The only item left from the original is the badge, and on closer inspection, it’s plastic." Very true Labour carries the name but not the Red Wall.

Looks like new Labour is well and truly in control.

Excellent article highlighting why there is a growing distrust in politicians. In the old days, they used to be criticised for abandoning their principles. These days, they don’t have any, and neither do their parties. Is this new? I think it can be traced back at least 20 or 30 years, to the time of Blair, Mandleson and the “New Labour” project.

Perfectly expressed Ben! As a former proud allotmenteer, now too old to bend, can I confirm your thesis. If Labour loses the allotments, it loses its soul and becomes the party of the big Mac and KFC

Typical politician, hypocritical duplicitous self serving, their only regret is that they are caught. She should resign without delay. Having said this, anyone providing a property to anyone else these days has to tread very carefully, which is why so many are walking away to leave the corporate giants take over. The councils are going to be too skint to help considering the deluge of demands on all their services. So all this causes a massive supply / demand problem that forces up rents, where Ali realised her property was £700 below where the market value is. But to avoid politicising the property market, we could also cover Len McCluskey, hard left champion and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Allowing a firm owned by his friends to overcharge his own union employer tens of millions while receiving private jet flights and football tickets from them worth tens of thousands. The Serious Fraud Office is investigating so I'm sure we are all looking forward to their outcome.

The hypocrisy of UK Labour knows no bounds. Homeless Minister who effectively evicts her tenants with the intent of selling her property only for it to conveniently not sell enabling her to increase the rent by £700 where before she couldn't as the tents had a legally binding contract. She's morally corrupt and deserved to go. If the house genuinely didn't sell why then didn't she contact her tenants and offer them back the property. She didn't. It's not like she's on the breadline. This stinks to holy hell. Champagne socialist. Red Tory same old story.

'Against that backdrop we learned this week that Homelessness Minister, Rushanara Ali, had removed four tenants from her £900 000 property before relisting it with the rent jacked up by £700.' On the whole I'm disinclined to cut much slack to our current bunch of MPs because across the last few years we've seen ample evidence that rather a lot of them don't deserve it! But I hesitate just a little in this particular case, because I happened to be listening this morning to James O'Brien's talk show on LBC when he picked up on this story and delved into the detail of it. Apparently Ms Ali, for whatever reason, decided to sell this particular property which she owned. The law requires that she had to give her tenants two months' notice to quit; but she gave them double that time - a full four months - to find alternative accommodation for themselves. But they, not unnaturally, declined that offer because they judged it better to begin their search for somewhere else to live immediately; they thought that preferable to having to scurry around looking for alternative accommodation at the last minute once she obtained a buyer for the house. They were able to find acceptable alternative rented accommodation for themselves, and so moved out. But as it turned out, Ms Ali was unable to find a buyer for her property, and so she reverted once again to seeking new tenants to rent it. She put it in the hands of an agent, and they appear to have advised her that she could now reasonably expect to find a tenant prepared to pay a higher rent. Now it's perfectly reasonable for anyone to argue that she was free to decline that advice and that she could continue to ask nothing more than the rent demanded from the former tenants; but had she done that, she might have had a hostile response from her agents, who levy their charges to the landlord in the light of their estimation of the rental value of the property. And it's also perfectly reasonable to point out that there's a potential conflict of interest around a 'homelessness' minister simultaneously, in her private capacity, carrying on the role of being a private landlord. In my view, if she was going to accept that role in government, she would have been wise to take immediate steps to sell off any properties for rental that she owned. But, even so, I think this isn't quite such a 'cut and dried' news story as it's - very understandably! - being portrayed!

A 2% wealth tax is taxed on assets over 10 million pounds. Not sure which dentist visit costs that much or what your understanding of a wealth tax is. A 2% wealth tax usually taxes the richest 1% of society. They will be fine. No need to feel sorry for them.

Completely correct.

It will be interesting to see if politicians rental/second homes comes under more scrutiny before the next elections. Plaid won't want to make it an election issue!

I like a lot of the points in this article. Particularly the one that Reeves' could sit on either party without needing to change her policies. I was hopeful when they came into power but they've had less challenges than the previous administration and somehow managed to dig a deeper hole than when they started. The allotment sell off (albeit in England) sets a worrying precedent. The government should be creating a fund for councils to use to buy land for new allotments given the amount of new housing estates being built with increasingly smaller outdoor spaces.

Must be a very hard life for people who have a personal wealth of over £ 10 Million.

Norway, Belgium and Switzerland are doing just fine. We don't need it permanently, but we need it to get out of a bind.

Wrong, it has worked, and is working, in Norway, Spain and Switzerland. All of those countries are still a thing, the last time I looked. Aren't you ashamed to spout such rubbish, when a few clicks of the mouse will give you the correct information? You typify the low quality of political debate, and the general rise of the idiocracy, which bedevils us in these times.

Oddly enough I heard statistics earlier today which indicated that there are more Labour MPs who, in their admission of outside interests, reveal that they're landlords of rental properties than there are Tories or Lib Dems. Though given how few Tories there now are in the Commons, maybe that should be no surprise.