What happens when the Govt. Under Secretary for Homelessness & Rough Sleeping is herself a landlord?
Well, the answer is she continues to act as a Landlord; serving notice on tenants that a lease would not be renewed so that the rent could be raised & the property re-listed.... now this is not an uncommon tactic, but its also what is stoking rent inflation (and therefore indirectly homelessness).
The problem with our political class in a nutshell; hypocrisy!
So Rushanara Ali has resigned with the usual letter to the PM saying she recognises she has become a distraction for the work of Govt.... and that she believes she followed all legal rules.
Well, I'm not sure anyone accused her of acting illegally, more that she was just acting like a landlord while holding the portfolio for homelessness - the accusation was more of hypocrisy not criminality!
@ChrisMayLA6
Wot! #Hypocrites in a #Labour government?
Surely not!
Indeed, I think that the central point; our political class (widely defined) seems to both have a culture of impunity & a tin ear for politics.... which is why them often (though not always obviously) come unstuck by making themselves easy targets for an antagonistic media
Interesting point.... I find the legalism of 'I followed the letter of the law' defence depressing, as it seems to suggest we can expect no moral judgments about their own actions from politicians (she is only the latest to take that line, of course)
@ChrisMayLA6 Lots of people are landlords as a result of (the previous) Labour government policies which clobbered pretty well all other methods of arranging that you could eat when you got too old and ill to work.
It seems unreasonable that someone who happens to be a landlord, doing exactly what the government nudged them to do, can't then take part in politics.
I was not suggesting she shouldn't 'then take part in politics' only that there was a clear issue with being a landlord *and* being under-secretary for the homeless.... which was a more focussed issue - perhaps I din't make that focus clear enough, apologies
Yes, I think the 'blind trust' approach would have been defensible & would have then allowed some distance - for me it would still play into the problem of a Govt. with too many landlords in it, but that would then have just been a general issue, and not become this particular political problem
AFAIR, the enshittification of occupational pension schemes happened mostly under the Tory/LibDem coalition, not under the previous Labour govt.
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 The 50p, the ACT raid, the collapse of trust in the financial sector were all under Labour.
On your specific point, I agree that the closing of final salary pension schemes has been presided over by all governments. But they were a myth anyway for all but the tiny number of people (some public sector employees excluded) who remained in the same scheme throughout their working lives.
I think there are still *some* politicians who are (at least partly) driven by a public service ethos, but I agree the proportion is shrinking in the face of the 'professional' self-serving members of the political class...
Yes, I'm using political class more as a category than as a tool of class analysis - mainly because I want to include both politicians & their fellow travellers in the media & management... but if I was intending to use it in class analysis mode, then your critique would be right - I may need to think of a different term to avoid this sort of slippage - thanks for prompting me to reflect on that
I imagine it's all at arms length through managing agents and terms like 'optimising the return on the property portfolio' which, in itself, is an accusation of at least hypocrisy if not direct corruption.
I didnβt know the job of Homelessness Minister was to increase homelessness β¦β¦ until now!
As I understand it she did try to sell the house while it was unoccupied. There may be another narrative here as to why this particular story emerged at a time when she was involved with proposals to tighten electoral law which would reduce if not eliminate the number of loopholes used to fund politics in the #uk .
Well, maybe so.... but, equally as a landlord with three properties, given complaints about landlord dominated politics, I think it was worth pointing out (especially given her portfolio).
She takes her job title literally
minister *for* homelessness
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