They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Perhaps somebody should tell the Conservatives.
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.
The Renters’ Rights Bill, currently on its way through Parliament, would stop tenants being evicted through no fault of their own, prevent landlords from taking more rent than the amount the property had been marketed at, and force housing providers to carry out required repairs promptly. And the Tories are opposing it.
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.
The headline on Badenoch’s article was “Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill is a disaster for young people”. But the content of the piece, as well as the publication she decided to write it for – The Daily Telegraph, whose regular young readers could probably be counted on one hand – made clear who her real target audience was: Britain’s private landlords.
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.
If the reports are accurate – and the Tories do not appear to be denying them – this is not simply a case of a shadow minister meeting with affected groups to hear their concerns about new legislation, as they might reasonably be expected to do.
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.
We are talking here about a proposed law that would stop tenants being evicted through no fault of their own, prevent landlords from taking more rent than the amount the property had been marketed at, and force housing providers to carry out required repairs promptly. This, at a time when almost a quarter of privately rented homes fail to meet the Decent Homes Standards – meaning they are affected by issues such as mould, vermin or unsafe wiring.
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.
Now, it seems, Badenoch and her party are determined to kill off Labour’s attempts to succeed where they failed. Have they learned absolutely nothing from their historic defeat last July? Do they have any desire to win power ever again? The answers, it seems, are no, and apparently not.
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.
Here is yet another sign of what has rapidly become obvious: the Tories are still in denial about the scale of the drubbing they received. They talk about needing a period of soul-searching and deep thinking about why they lost, yet show no sign of actually doing either.
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.
All of this is blindingly obvious – except, it seems, to the people running the Conservative Party. Instead, Badenoch has decided to send out a message that is loud and clear: her party is on the side of exploitative landlords, not exploited tenants.
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.
The unavoidable conclusion is that Badenoch and her team are just not very good at politics. There are 2.7 million private landlords in England, most of whom own just one or two rental properties. By contrast, there are 11 million private renters. If you want to win an election, you don’t need Einstein to work out which group you might want on your side.
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.
What a message it would send if the Tories came out and ditched their opposition to the Renters’ Rights Bill, announced that their previous objections had been misguided – and they were, from now on, going to stand staunchly on the side of Britain’s beleaguered private renters.
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.
And here, in a needless row over giving renters more rights, we see how little progress the Tories have made since the election – and how far they have to go before they can be deemed fit to govern again. Under Badenoch, the Conservatives are doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. The only question is at what point the Conservatives will realise that, as political strategies go, that really is insanity.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is former Westminster editor
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