So the right wing media’s latest obsession is that Angela Rayner once owned a council flat! And that she might have profited from its sale and possibly maybe didn’t pay about £1-2k of capital gains taxes (but who needs evidence when we’ve got wild speculation). Okay, so the media could focus their investigative resources on the billions the Tories have squandered on various boondoggles (this week alone one minster was found to have wasted £34,000 of tax payers money on legal fees because she said something dumb on twitter and was too pigheaded to apologise). Never mind the vast sums plundered by Tory donors during covid.
In fact this is kind of the problem. Because most of the media (save outlets such as the Guardian, byline times or Private eye) are not investigating these things, we don’t know the true extend of the corruption. To pull up on just two stories from Led by Donkeys, Ester McVey the (don’t laugh) minster for common sense, owns a flat in London (bought with taxpayers money), which she’s renting out (for thousands a month), then claiming expenses on another flat in the city. In another, they were able to get several Tory MP’s (including former minsters and the chair of the 1922 committee) to agree to lobby for a foreign government for a fee.
But no, let’s ignore all that and instead talk about Angela Rayner’s council house. More relevant is the timing of all of this. Angela is one of the few genuinely left leaning people left in a senior position in labour. Starmer can’t really remove her, as the deputy leader is appointed by the members. So this could be the Tory client media doing Starmer a favour by neutering any threat of rebellion from the left wing of the labour party, ensuring its business as usual (i.e. Tory rule continues under a a labour flag).
But if there has been wrong doing, surely she should resign right? Actually no. This is beergate all over again. If you have a system where the honest politicians resign any time they get caught doing the slightest thing wrong, while the dishonest get to rob, cheat, steal and otherwise get away with murder, pretty soon you’ll have no honest politicians left, only the dishonest ones in the pocket of billionaires. The media will have their spies hound their political opponents, set up honey traps and basically harass them until they mess up and then the media will spend weeks running 20 page specials about it until they resign. Hell, even if they are completely squeaky clean, the gutter press will just bribe someone to make something up and report that as fact.
What this whole situation highlights is two things are needed. Firstly some sort of independent body tasked with investigating politicians. The Australians have recently introduced such a body and while its early days, the fact that the conservatives fought tooth and nail to stop it kind of suggests it might prove to be effective. My suspicion is that such a body would conclude in the Rayner case that its either a matter of much ado about nothing, or maybe a small fine. Meanwhile dozens of Tory MP’s (including at least 5 of the last 6 PM’s), party donors and journalists would all end up in jail with much of their assets ceased.
The other lesson is the housing lottery. The Tories brought in the right to buy for fairly cynical political reasons. They knew home owners were more likely to vote Tory. They also knew that many of these council properties were going to need expensive maintenance (a portion of those costs could thus be pushed onto these unsuspecting new home owners). And then also knew that eventually a lot of these properties would end up in the hands of private landlords, who also supported the Tories. At the same time it gave them the excuse to stop building council houses (meaning more private housing, which would please yet another group of Troy cretins). In the process they ended up creating the massive housing crisis we are now stuck with.
This has created a lot of property haves and have nots. Some have done well out of it. Others less so. And often, its kind of random into which category you’ve wound up in. E.g. I know someone who bought their council flat in central London and is now able to live rent & mortgage free in a city where most people pay +50% of their salary on housing. On the other hand I know someone else in Scotland who inherited a flat in a council block. But then got hit with massive bills for renovations, which he couldn’t afford (a student at the time), so was forced to sell it for less than it was worth, just to get out from under his debts.
Naturally this has created resentment and envy against those who have done well, by those who’ve gotten the raw end of the deal. Clearly the solution is to build more council houses. In fact it would make sense for the government to take advantage of the drop in housing prices to start buying up as many newly built homes on the market as it can. Then begin a formal programme aimed at undoing the thatcher legacy, by building more social housing. Keep in mind a significant proportion of the expenses of local councils these days is providing emergency accommodation or renting off private landlords. So over the long term, this should be revenue neutral.
But whether the incoming Tory….sorry… Starmer government will do so I’m not so sure.
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