20th
Nov 2019
Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour's General Election campaign and as usual attacked the private rented sector that is apparently rife with “dodgy landlords.”
pixabay.com
However he failed to explain how landlords became “dodgy” but during his speech he did say “We’re going after the tax dodgers. We’re going after the dodgy landlords. We’re going after the bad bosses. We’re going after the big polluters. Because we know whose side we’re on.”
In another passage from his campaign speech he said: “Whose side are you on? The dodgy landlords like the Duke of Westminster, Britain’s youngest billionaire, who tried to evict whole blocks of families to make way for luxury apartments? Or the millions of tenants in Britain who struggle to pay their rent each month?”
He also said that 'dodgy landlords' made up “a corrupt system" and only he knows what that means.
Labour's election campaign has already featured varying aspects of the PRS and seems to have taken up many a soundbite on centre stage.
One of Labour's recent tweets contained a video of frustrated tenants extremely unhappy with their rented 'homes' with the following text beneath the video: “General Election 2019 is here and nothing shows the need for it like this: Cockroaches, flooding, non-secure tenancies and doors that don’t lock. Yet nothing but Tory contempt. We’ve been working with these residents for three months and will win for them and many like them. #ByTheMany.”
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech did not include any reference to the two most controversial PRS policies touted over the last few months by Labour luminaries.
The two in question are rolling out rent controls in major cities and its proposed new Right to Buy policy.
John McDonnell the Shadow Chancellor announced in a national newspaper that his Right to Buy policy would mean that landlords could be forced to sell their rental properties to the tenants.
Richard Merrick of PIMS, said: "The policies are utter madness as historically worldwide rent controls have made the situation far worse for tenants, as numbers of available rental homes shrink drastically; besides this the party has not mentioned which major cities will be subject to rent capping, although London is a certainty with the many comments made by the Mayor.
"Rent to Buy will 'shotgun' landlords into having to sell up, but the other extremely dangerous point is that McDonnell did say the party would decide what a fair price would be for a property to both tenants and landlords. This disclosure is enough to send shivers down the spine of the sector."
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