The Tories appear to have decided that the route back to power must involve leading the charge against the Labour government’s plans to give private renters more rights.
Leader Kemi Badenoch seems to think that it is not hard-pressed renters who need more support, but private landlords. Late last year, she authored an article insisting that landlords “provide a vital service” and were overwhelmingly “people who care for their tenants and ask only that their property be respected and a fair rent is paid”. She even went as far as suggesting that giving renters more protections from eviction was an attack fundamental property rights. She did not attempt to explain why, in this nation apparently full of kind-hearted, altruistic private landlords, rents have risen faster than inflation and one in four privately rented homes don’t meet basic safety standards.
Now, The Guardian has reported that the Conservatives aren’t just siding with landlords but actively collaborating with them to try to deprive renters of stronger protections. According to revelations this week, this effort seems to be being led by a woman named Baroness Scott. Scott, we now know, has been meeting with major landlords and their representatives to discuss how they might scupper the Renters’ Rights Bill. This would not be especially newsworthy or interesting were it not for the fact that Baroness Scott has been appointed, by Badenoch, to be the Conservatives’ Shadow Housing Minister.
Instead, Baroness Scott is said to have discussed with landlord groups how they might work together to delay or stop the Renters’ Rights Bill that is currently before Parliament. They are even reported to have discussed a possible legal challenge claiming that the legislation would breach landlords’ human rights – an idea that Scott is said to have supported.
If the story so far sounds familiar, it’s because it is: blocking plans to beef up renters’ rights is precisely what the Tories did in government. When Michael Gove, then the Housing Secretary, proposed similar reforms to those now being introduced by Labour, a vocal backlash from Tory backbenchers, landlords, and Tory backbenchers who are also landlords killed the plans dead.
They may not realise it yet, but the Tories were brutally booted out of office for being widely seen to have done next to nothing to improve most people’s lives, mislaying their moral compass and governing on behalf of the wrong people. Fast forward less than a year from their unprecedented defeat and here they are, scheming with wealthy landlords in a bid to continue deprive hard-pressed private renters of basic rights.
If they are to ever regain power, then, the Tories need to build a new coalition that includes millions more younger people. Among this age group, housing is one of the biggest concerns. The housing crisis is not just a daily blight on their lives: it is also a symbol of how badly their generation has been betrayed by recent governments, and how they have been mercilessly exploited to maintain a system that benefits other people at their expense.
This points to a much deeper problem for the Tories: rather than waking up to the challenge they face, they barely seem to have changed at all. It is hard to see how a Conservative government led by Badenoch would be significantly different from the governments of the past 14 years. The Tories seem intent on making the same mistakes, standing up for the wrong people and ignoring the obvious issues staring them in the face – like, in this case, the dire problems facing so many of Britain’s private renters.
square ANNE MCELVOY
Starmer needs to tell Labour’s story – before others do it for him
Read MoreSimple mathematics aside, there is a more fundamental issue here: the need to revamp the Conservative brand after the damage that has been done to it.
It would show voters that the party was learning, that it was changing, that it wanted to serve the struggling majority, not the privileged elite. And it would prove that the Tories were calling time on their years-long neglect of younger people. After becoming Conservative leader in 2005, David Cameron knew he had to prove to voters that the Tories had changed. He spent several years working flat out to detoxify the party’s brand. Badenoch, by contrast, is pouring another load of radioactive waste all over it.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is former Westminster editor
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