No Fault Evictions

[Terry - Somerset]

You couldn't make it up!
Most new PMs and governments have a honeymoon period but this clown is so stupid that he has got to be the most unpopular PM of all time at this early stage in their governance.
He should be walking around with a red nose and huge shoes...it would fit his persona.
First they take away the pensioner's winter fuel payments claiming there is a black hole of £22bn...they didn't say that £9bn is self inflicted by giving it away in above-inflation pay rises to their union paymasters.
I think it's great, they take away the winter fuel payments and give it to already highly paid train drivers...really good logic and I'm sure very popular with the pensioners.
How many billions does it cost to house and deal with the false claimants of asylum but who are in truth economic migrants? They will get put into hotels where they are fed and kept warm while pensioners will struggle to heat their own homes this winter!

Because of this shower's ideas, there are going to be far fewer rental properties available which will negate any housebuilding numbers for affordable rentals for some years to come especially given the numbers of migrants coming here. They will need housing so where are all these homes going to come from?
Rents are only going to get higher rather than lower with people chasing fewer and fewer properties to rent.

Not only that they're considering taking away the single occupant council tax deduction. It just gets worse. There's also a saving to be made with pensioner's free bus passes and that too has been mooted.
I can't wait until next May's local elections...that's when the pensioners will have their revenge

They're also going to tax private education and that in turn means many people can't afford to send their kids to private schools so it increases the load on state schools which can't even find the teachers to fill the posts already available let alone retain the staffing.

...and the voters thought the Conservatives were bad! I'll wager they won't be saying that in a year's time, that's for sure.

The Labour party will be in control of national government for the next 5 years. Any thought that somehow their tenure will come to an early end is truly naïve - they have a massive majority, can pass any legislation they see fit.

Even with revolt or discontent in the ranks - there will be some - they will keep control. Whether Starmer is deposed - I would rate it unlikely unless the result of major screw up or personal scandal.

I am not sure if the winter fuel allowance debacle was:

• deliberate to send a message about his future resolve and intent
• incompetent - a part educated baboon could have anticipated widespread objection to the plan. Issues surrounding pension credit claimants and cliff edge benefits were a surprise!

Placing greater demands on landlords and improving rights for tenants has some justification. However if the effect is that landlords then sell up:

• there will be less rented property available likely increasing rents
• the immediate impact of more properties being marketed will be to moderate prices
• however whether the property is owner occupied or rented does nothing to increase the availability of places to live which requires real houses to be built.

If one were to mark the first two months I would give them a B- (old school marking):

• they have played a very predictable political game - blame the predecessors for problems.
• they had access to Treasury etc and campaigned blaming the Tories for 14 years of chaos - there should be almost nothing they were unaware
• school fees and winter fuel are trivia - a couple of £bn - when compared to UK debt of £2700bn. A political signal but economically irrelevant.
• dismantled illegal immigration plans (I also thought Rwanda was daft) but there is nothing to replace it.

How did we get here. Simple - the Tories completely screwed up. Boris and Truss were a disgrace, allowing Reform to split the vote ensured a massive loss. Tories were not fit to be elected. One can only hope they get some coherent competent leadership sorted well before 2029.

 

[woodieallen]

Pretty much hit the nail on the head, Terry. I can think of only one thing that would have made it 10x worse. Corbyn could still be leader

 

[Jacob]

.....

Because of this shower's ideas, there are going to be far fewer rental properties ....

Not unless they demolish them or leave them empty. The number of homes available does not change, but the market does.
In theory, fewer landlords bidding for a property means lower sale price, which might just enable a buyer to step up from renting to home buying, leaving a different rental property available.
Fewer landlords = lower sale prices = buyers freed from rental = lower rents for those still renting.
Just crude simple market logic.
Keynes wrote of ...."the rentier, .... the functionless investor," i.e. they serve no purpose.

 

[HOJ]

In my situation, and the point of taking on responsibility for our parents, my sister and I made the decision 3 years ago to move my 90 year old mum, after my dad died from covid, from North Norfolk to a small bungalow, that we renovated, in Leicestershire, which my sister can see from her own house, along with my 2 nephews, who also live locally, and their children, all have an overwatch on her, I go as often as I possibly can and between us we have kept her in her own home, and more than happy.

 

[AJB Temple]

Regarding the more rental properties / no change argument. It's naive. For example, I know an Irish builder and property investor, in his 70s now. No eduction or inheritance but strong work ethic. Irish working class background. Through his life he built up a portfolio of about 70 houses in London around the Lewisham, Bromley, Blackheath and Greenwich areas mostly, along with a few in Deal on the coast. Almost all detached houses in good areas, some semis and some arranged as flats. Over the past several months, as the writing became ever clearer on the wall, he has quietly issued Section 21 notices on almost all of them, and either maxed out the rent capacity in anticipation of tax increases and rent controls, or sold some and shifted the cash to an EU country beyond the UK taxman. Various fully legal capital protection and inheritance tax minimisation measures put in place quite a while ago. His friend has many more properties (I believe around 200) and he has done the same. They were apparently good landlords and the properties were well maintained as they own in-house building companies. They had quite a number of tenants who paid rent via the benefits deduction system, but unfortunately these have now all been moved on as it makes much more commercial sense to max out the rents rather than risk local authority rent controls via the back door. A number of properties have thus lost multi occupation tenants (single mothers with kids and no income for example, anyone in arrears, anyone who has not had a market rent increase etc) and now have fewer tenants but all with professional jobs, far higher rents and much bigger deposits. This was prompted by the constant rhetoric and sniping of what they see as an anti-landlord labour government. So these landlords took protective measures in advance. They will definitely not be alone in having done this in London. Housing stock is obviously unchanged, far fewer people are housed in these properties now, but from the landlords' point of view they have reduced their risk significantly and increased their gross rental income by in excess of 40%.

I take no moral or other position here, but it seems clear to me that when Sir Kneeler said "things will get worse before they get better" (IF they get better....) he was spot on. Unintended consequences for tenants.

No doubt there will be those who say that landlords are parasites or whatever. But really these were hard working working class man who have grafted to build up wealth. Both of them have been "on the tools" for much of their lives, have taken a good deal of risk buying properties at auction that needed vision and a lot of work, and see no reason why they should not protect it now. Angela Rayner is regarded by many in the Irish community from which these men come, as duplicitous in what she says vs her won property dealings. Keir Starmer has just this weekend been shown to accept personal gifts for his wife and himself from rich donors and somehow failed to declare them. Is it any wonder that people don't trust politicians?

 

[woodieallen]

Regarding the more rental properties / no change argument. It's naive. For example, I know an Irish builder and property investor, in his 70s now. No eduction or inheritance but strong work ethic. Irish working class background. Through his life he built up a portfolio of about 70 houses in London around the Lewisham, Bromley, Blackheath and Greenwich areas mostly, along with a few in Deal on the coast. Almost all detached houses in good areas, some semis and some arranged as flats. Over the past several months, as the writing became ever clearer on the wall, he has quietly issued Section 21 notices on almost all of them, and either maxed out the rent capacity in anticipation of tax increases and rent controls, or sold some and shifted the cash to an EU country beyond the UK taxman. Various fully legal capital protection and inheritance tax minimisation measures put in place quite a while ago. His friend has many more properties (I believe around 200) and he has done the same. They were apparently good landlords and the properties were well maintained as they own in-house building companies. They had quite a number of tenants who paid rent via the benefits deduction system, but unfortunately these have now all been moved on as it makes much more commercial sense to max out the rents rather than risk local authority rent controls via the back door. A number of properties have thus lost multi occupation tenants (single mothers with kids and no income for example, anyone in arrears, anyone who has not had a market rent increase etc) and now have fewer tenants but all with professional jobs, far higher rents and much bigger deposits. This was prompted by the constant rhetoric and sniping of what they see as an anti-landlord labour government. So these landlords took protective measures in advance. They will definitely not be alone in having done this in London. Housing stock is obviously unchanged, far fewer people are housed in these properties now, but from the landlords' point of view they have reduced their risk significantly and increased their gross rental income by in excess of 40%.

I take no moral or other position here, but it seems clear to me that when Sir Kneeler said "things will get worse before they get better" (IF they get better....) he was spot on. Unintended consequences for tenants.

Excellent post, AJB. I know of many other landlords who have taken similar steps. The naivety of Labour knows no bounds.

No doubt there will be those who say that landlords are parasites or whatever.

Now who could you possibly mean ?

 

[Yorkieguy]

A key platform of Sir Kier Starmer's pre-election pitch was to 'bring back trust into politics'. Well trust is like virginity - when it's gone, it's gone. When in opposition in 2017 and there were rumours that the Tories might scrap the winter fuel allowance, Labour carried out an impact assessment which calculated that the policy could cause 3,850 deaths. Given that fuel prices have rocketed since 2917, at PMQs, last week, Rishi Sunak asked if the government had carried out it's own impact assessment before scrapping the winter fuel allowance, and would put the figure at a higher or lower number. If he was politically astute, he would have seen what's coming. Reeves and Rayner have changed their tune having said in 2019 'The Tories are the nasty party - they'll snatch the winter fuel allowance'.

Sir Keir dodged the impact assessment question, saying scrapping pensioners' fuel allowance was: "necessary to stabilise the economy and that the government was putting "mitigations" in place. Apart from the fact that scrapping the allowance will (allegedly) save £1.3Bn, the total welfare bill is £300Bn, a saving of just 0.4%, against a £9Bn inflation-busting no-strings pay rise for train drivers. I think basically, he's not politically astute enough to have realised the backlash there would be, and it's not even winter yet. The relatively small saving, which clearly came as much as a surprise to his own MPs, let alone the electorate will eclipse everything sense in the months ahead.

Even if we believe his repetitive '£22bn black hole about which they knew nothing' (which I don't), the hardship snatching the winter fuel allowance will cause to most pensioners is out of all proportion to the small saving. NHS spending in 2022/23 was £181.7 billion. The vast majority of this (94.6%, or £171.8 billion) was on day-to-day items such as staff salaries and medicines. The money taken from pensioners won't go far to to fund pay awards (and NHS pension contributions) in the NHS or train drivers. I'm not saying the 5.5% NHS award was excessive, but it will add £9.5Bn to NHS pay.

Starmer says: 'pensioners will get a £460 a year rise next Spring'. Meanwhile, are they go go into a state of suspended animation?

For a start off it's not true that all pensioners will get that amount and he knows it. Only those on the new State pension who retired at age 66 in 2016 will get that. Men born before April 6, 1951 or women born before April 6, 1953 will be on the old State pension.

Old basic state pension: Applies to those people who reached state pension age before April 6, 2016.

The basic state pension is now £169.50 a week – or £8,814 a year.

These figures are for the full basic state pension. The actual amount you get depends on your national insurance record.

Some pensioners might also get more than this if they qualified for the additional state pension – also known as the state earnings-related pension scheme (Serps) and State Second Pension (S2P) – however this will depend on what they earned while working and whether or not they contracted out of it for a period of time.

New full state pension:

For those reaching state pension age on or after April 6, 2016: Men born on or after April 6, 1951 and women born on or after April 6, 1953.

The current new full state pension is £221.20 a week – or £11,502.40 a year.

https://www.thetimes.com/money-mentor/pensions-retirement/state-pension/how-much-state-pension-will-i-get#:~:text=So, thanks to the triple,or £8,814 a year

Hence, pensioner over 74 - the oldest and most frail, will be on the old pension, of which there will be millions, many of who will have been manual workers some of whom were born before the war. Many manual workers didn't have occupational pensions. The average life expectancy of someone born in 1940 was 70.4 years, so on average they'd be lucky (if that's the word), to have had five years of retirement.
Over three million household are eligible for pensions credit, yet an estimated 800,000 don't claim it, and we're told by Starmer that the poorest pensioners only need to apply for pension credit and it's theirs on a plate. Well good luck with that. The online application form is 26 pages long, has 15 sections, and asks 243 questions.

First 15 questions are easy enough - name, D.O.B, N.I. number and address. Question 4 asks for all the other surnames or family names by which you've ben known - maiden name, married name, change of surname. Then a section of your partner and children, - is the child in prison or custody, pending trial or sentence? Do you or your partner have any money or investments? (If you have more than £10,000 see separate document about savings.) Are you in hospital as an in patient? And so on, for 243 questions.

The problem the government has - and they knew it before being elected, is that the antiquated pension system isn't able to 'means test' the winter fuel payment for pensioners. They haven't a clue how many are paupers or millionaires so you pay it to all or none. There will be many such as myself, with an occupational pension high enough that I would be excluded, but very many who are on the basic state pension living below the poverty line. There aren't that many millionaire pensioners - According to ONS data from June 2023, the top 1% of employees in the UK earn £15,081 or more per month before tax. Annually, this figure is £180,972. (After tax, £90K).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gross-pay-percentiles-united-kingdom/

Before the election, Starmer was upbeat about his 'fully costed, fully funded' wealth creating manifesto. (Sounds like BoJo's 'Oven Ready Brexit Deal'). As politicians are prone to do, he overpromised and now, he's just become a 'miserabilist' saying how awful things are, parroting '£22Bn black hole', and how there's worse to come and it's all the fault of the Tories. Nothing to inspire inward investment, rental properties are being sold in a rush to beat capital gains tax, and for middle income households, taxation will become a euphemism for confiscation, and high earners who can are taking flight.

No seeds of optimism, nothing to inspire anyone - evern his own MPs can see that.

In WW1, officers led their troops to the front in The Somme past other soldiers digging graves which would later be filled with many of those marching past. When Churchill gave his inspiration 'We'll fight them on the beaches' speech, every word was from Old English except one, which was French, and that word was 'surrender', prefixed by 'never'. How who 'D Day' have gone if all the officers had said "look guys - ain't it awful - you can see what we're up against - it's far worse than we could have imagined and it's going to get worse still'.

The upshot is that for 14 years, Labour has been little more than an idealist protest group. 202 Labour MPs were newly elected in 2019, another 231 in 2024. Of the more experienced MP's its 14 years since they were in government.

His downfall won't be because of blowhard windbags like me, but from his own ranks.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56973/speech-now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent

Oh well, keep the home fires burning!

It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.

David.
Duty Windbag.

 

[woodieallen]

......

Hence, pensioner over 74 - the oldest and most frail, will be on the old pension, of which there will be millions, many of who will have been manual workers some of whom were born before the war. ......

Guess who's 75 ....I knew I loathed Kneeler., Now even more. The missus has also been caught out. There's a word to describe Kneeler...on the tip of my tongue...a very short word.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

A key platform of Sir Kier Starmer's pre-election pitch was to 'bring back trust into politics'. Well trust is like virginity - when it's gone, it's gone. When in opposition in 2017 and there were rumours that the Tories might scrap the winter fuel allowance, Labour carried out an impact assessment which calculated that the policy could cause 3,850 deaths. Given that fuel prices have rocketed since 2917, at PMQs, last week, Rishi Sunak asked if the government had carried out it's own impact assessment before scrapping the winter fuel allowance, and would put the figure at a higher or lower number. If he was politically astute, he would have seen what's coming. Reeves and Rayner have changed their tune having said in 2019 'The Tories are the nasty party - they'll snatch the winter fuel allowance'.

Sir Keir dodged the impact assessment question, saying scrapping pensioners' fuel allowance was: "necessary to stabilise the economy and that the government was putting "mitigations" in place. Apart from the fact that scrapping the allowance will (allegedly) save £1.3Bn, the total welfare bill is £300Bn, a saving of just 0.4%, against a £9Bn inflation-busting no-strings pay rise for train drivers. I think basically, he's not politically astute enough to have realised the backlash there would be, and it's not even winter yet. The relatively small saving, which clearly came as much as a surprise to his own MPs, let alone the electorate will eclipse everything sense in the months ahead.

Even if we believe his repetitive '£22bn black hole about which they knew nothing' (which I don't), the hardship snatching the winter fuel allowance will cause to most pensioners is out of all proportion to the small saving. NHS spending in 2022/23 was £181.7 billion. The vast majority of this (94.6%, or £171.8 billion) was on day-to-day items such as staff salaries and medicines. The money taken from pensioners won't go far to to fund pay awards (and NHS pension contributions) in the NHS or train drivers. I'm not saying the 5.5% NHS award was excessive, but it will add £9.5Bn to NHS pay.

Starmer says: 'pensioners will get a £460 a year rise next Spring'. Meanwhile, are they go go into a state of suspended animation?

For a start off it's not true that all pensioners will get that amount and he knows it. Only those on the new State pension who retired at age 66 in 2016 will get that. Men born before April 6, 1951 or women born before April 6, 1953 will be on the old State pension.

Old basic state pension: Applies to those people who reached state pension age before April 6, 2016.

The basic state pension is now £169.50 a week – or £8,814 a year.

These figures are for the full basic state pension. The actual amount you get depends on your national insurance record.

Some pensioners might also get more than this if they qualified for the additional state pension – also known as the state earnings-related pension scheme (Serps) and State Second Pension (S2P) – however this will depend on what they earned while working and whether or not they contracted out of it for a period of time.

New full state pension:

For those reaching state pension age on or after April 6, 2016: Men born on or after April 6, 1951 and women born on or after April 6, 1953.

The current new full state pension is £221.20 a week – or £11,502.40 a year.

https://www.thetimes.com/money-mentor/pensions-retirement/state-pension/how-much-state-pension-will-i-get#:~:text=So, thanks to the triple,or £8,814 a year

Hence, pensioner over 74 - the oldest and most frail, will be on the old pension, of which there will be millions, many of who will have been manual workers some of whom were born before the war. Many manual workers didn't have occupational pensions. The average life expectancy of someone born in 1940 was 70.4 years, so on average they'd be lucky (if that's the word), to have had five years of retirement.
Over three million household are eligible for pensions credit, yet an estimated 800,000 don't claim it, and we're told by Starmer that the poorest pensioners only need to apply for pension credit and it's theirs on a plate. Well good luck with that. The online application form is 26 pages long, has 15 sections, and asks 243 questions.

First 15 questions are easy enough - name, D.O.B, N.I. number and address. Question 4 asks for all the other surnames or family names by which you've ben known - maiden name, married name, change of surname. Then a section of your partner and children, - is the child in prison or custody, pending trial or sentence? Do you or your partner have any money or investments? (If you have more than £10,000 see separate document about savings.) Are you in hospital as an in patient? And so on, for 243 questions.

The problem the government has - and they knew it before being elected, is that the antiquated pension system isn't able to 'means test' the winter fuel payment for pensioners. They haven't a clue how many are paupers or millionaires so you pay it to all or none. There will be many such as myself, with an occupational pension high enough that I would be excluded, but very many who are on the basic state pension living below the poverty line. There aren't that many millionaire pensioners - According to ONS data from June 2023, the top 1% of employees in the UK earn £15,081 or more per month before tax. Annually, this figure is £180,972. (After tax, £90K).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gross-pay-percentiles-united-kingdom/

Before the election, Starmer was upbeat about his 'fully costed, fully funded' wealth creating manifesto. (Sounds like BoJo's 'Oven Ready Brexit Deal'). As politicians are prone to do, he overpromised and now, he's just become a 'miserabilist' saying how awful things are, parroting '£22Bn black hole', and how there's worse to come and it's all the fault of the Tories. Nothing to inspire inward investment, rental properties are being sold in a rush to beat capital gains tax, and for middle income households, taxation will become a euphemism for confiscation, and high earners who can are taking flight.

No seeds of optimism, nothing to inspire anyone - evern his own MPs can see that.

In WW1, officers led their troops to the front in The Somme past other soldiers digging graves which would later be filled with many of those marching past. When Churchill gave his inspiration 'We'll fight them on the beaches' speech, every word was from Old English except one, which was French, and that word was 'surrender', prefixed by 'never'. How who 'D Day' have gone if all the officers had said "look guys - ain't it awful - you can see what we're up against - it's far worse than we could have imagined and it's going to get worse still'.

• The upshot is that for 14 years, Labour has been little more than an idealist protest group. 202 Labour MPs were newly elected in 2019, another 231 in 2024. Of the more experienced MP's its 14 years since they were in government.

His downfall won't be because of blowhard windbags like me, but from his own ranks.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56973/speech-now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent

Oh well, keep the home fires burning!

It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.

David.
Duty Windbag.

I agree with your observations.

Being somewhat cynical about our political masters I had always believed the only thing separating Tory from Labour in the integrity and honesty stakes was 14 years of baggage.

Labour have proven in quick time that my beliefs were spot on, and the Starmer protestations of new broom etc were so much fluff. As I write I am now watching Lammy being evasive about weapons for Ukraine.

In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose “ – the more things change, the more they stay the same

Even accepting that a winter fuel allowance should be focussed on those in most need, the proposal has two major flaws:

• it is means tested with all the arbitrariness and costs of management that result
• it operates on a cliff edge - earn £1 more than the entitlement to pension credit, or fail to claim pension credit when justified - lose the whole amount

Any incoming government with a pretence towards radical change would seek to reduce complexity and cost by adding the winter fuel amounts to the pension. It would then be taxed at the pensioners marginal rate - those with the highest incomes pay most tax!

 

[Terry - Somerset]

An example of statistics being used for political effect.

In the winter fuel debate an argument by Labour was that "27% of individuals in the 65+ age cohort lived in a household with a total wealth above £1,000,000". A fact to create the impression that removing winter fuel allowance from wealthy many pensioners may be largely painless.

I decided to check. The document from which the statistic was sourced seems to be The 27% who claim to be politically independent.

The document does not define "wealth". However the ONS from whom I think the data is sourced defines wealth as split into four categories - net financial wealth + net property wealth + private pensions wealth + physical wealth.

A key point to note is the valuation of private pensions and property. Based on annuity tables the capital required age 65 for an annuity of £10k pa increasing with inflation is £250k.

A pensioner couple, having done fairly ordinary jobs and accumulated a modest pension, living in an unremarkable house worth (say) £300k, having accumulated savings (ISAs etc) of £100k would be a millionaire household.

They are not poor by any means, but the observation that "27% live in households worth £1m or more" is deliberately misleading.

Folk may have voted Labour in the belief that they were a whiter than white alternative to the justifiably discredited Tories. I think time will show them to be equally contemptible.

 

[ey_tony]

Not unless they demolish them or leave them empty. The number of homes available does not change, but the market does.
In theory, fewer landlords bidding for a property means lower sale price, which might just enable a buyer to step up from renting to home buying, leaving a different rental property available.
Fewer landlords = lower sale prices = buyers freed from rental = lower rents for those still renting.
Just crude simple market logic.
Keynes wrote of ...."the rentier, .... the functionless investor," i.e. they serve no purpose.

Now you see this is where your socialist economics logic fail you.
It doesn't matter if house prices fall due to there being more properties for sale on the market. While lower prices may benefit and encourage first time buyers etc, the major issue is that there is already a huge shortfall of decent quality affordable properties to rent and that can only get worse if there are fewer properties available to rent which we are seeing due to landlords withdrawing from the rental market.

This will only get worse as the government brings in more and more legislation surrounding rental properties and not forgetting taxes which will deter people from entering the rental market as means of income.
Couple that with uncontrolled migration, demand for rental accommodation is only going to increase rather than decrease and I can't see the government's promises to build X-number of homes by 2025 actually failing to come off as promised.

 

[Billy_wizz]

The Labour party will be in control of national government for the next 5 years. Any thought that somehow their tenure will come to an early end is truly naïve - they have a massive majority, can pass any legislation they see fit.

Even with revolt or discontent in the ranks - there will be some - they will keep control. Whether Starmer is deposed - I would rate it unlikely unless the result of major screw up or personal scandal.

I am not sure if the winter fuel allowance debacle was:

• deliberate to send a message about his future resolve and intent
• incompetent - a part educated baboon could have anticipated widespread objection to the plan. Issues surrounding pension credit claimants and cliff edge benefits were a surprise!

Placing greater demands on landlords and improving rights for tenants has some justification. However if the effect is that landlords then sell up:

• there will be less rented property available likely increasing rents
• the immediate impact of more properties being marketed will be to moderate prices
• however whether the property is owner occupied or rented does nothing to increase the availability of places to live which requires real houses to be built.

If one were to mark the first two months I would give them a B- (old school marking):

• they have played a very predictable political game - blame the predecessors for problems.
• they had access to Treasury etc and campaigned blaming the Tories for 14 years of chaos - there should be almost nothing they were unaware
• school fees and winter fuel are trivia - a couple of £bn - when compared to UK debt of £2700bn. A political signal but economically irrelevant.
• dismantled illegal immigration plans (I also thought Rwanda was daft) but there is nothing to replace it.

How did we get here. Simple - the Tories completely screwed up. Boris and Truss were a disgrace, allowing Reform to split the vote ensured a massive loss. Tories were not fit to be elected. One can only hope they get some coherent competent leadership sorted well before 2029.

Or better yet a genuine 3rd option that will take half the voters from both sides! The scary thing is that if they get voting for 16/17year olds through they will most likely have at least another term in power!

 

[Diver Fred]

I think time will show them to be equally contemptible.

I'd say far more contemptible!

Personally I dread the next few years. It's already affecting our plans one where we will live etc. I saved and planned for our old age and I can see those plans being shredded as the days pass. I worked in my employment, restricted my social and dependant family to support both my wife's and my parents in their dotage, now they have all passed on our reward is - taxed to death by a nasty deceptive labour government.

 

[Jacob]

.......

Folk may have voted Labour in the belief that they were a whiter than white alternative to the justifiably discredited Tories. I think time will show them to be equally contemptible.

I found Starmer contemptible from the start with the purge of the left, particularly Rebecca Long-Bailey, breaking all his leadership election pledges and making false allegations of antisemitism against anybody he wanted out.
I voted green last time.
All he's done in the meantime has been to explain why he can't do anything about anything, yet.
Just an old fashioned conservative, with dubious connections and a dodgy record.

 

[woodieallen]

.... taxed to death by a nasty deceptive labour government.

You're being far too polite. I share your pain. If your MP is Labour then email to him/her as often as you can airing your grievance.

 

[niemeyjt]

Some have said if a landlord sells up this doesn't change the number of houses in UK. True.

However, from what I have seen as a landlord and a renter and a parent of renters and a parent of owners, when properties are rented they are frequently occupied by two or three people - whereas when purchased they are often occupied then by singletons.

Selling therefore actually does reduce the number of places available - even if not the number of houses.

 

[Trafalgar]

"No fault?" I'd hate to hear what rises to the level of a fault.

 

[Diver Fred]

The rental market is necessary - personally in the last 5 years of my employment my work location changed 6 times (Ipswich, Slough, Hemel Hempstead, Bristol, Bridgewater and Rugby) all for the same company. Without being able to rent I'd have been in a constant house trading flux.

 

[Jacob]

Some have said if a landlord sells up this doesn't change the number of houses in UK. True.

However, from what I have seen as a landlord and a renter and a parent of renters and a parent of owners, when properties are rented they are frequently occupied by two or three people - whereas when purchased they are often occupied then by singletons.

T'other way around in my experience. Bought homes occupied by families, sometimes with lodgers etc. Singletons go for flats or small houses.

 

[Spectric]

Any thought that somehow their tenure will come to an early end is truly naïve - they have a massive majority, can pass any legislation they see fit.

They do have a large majority but when it comes to those seats many are marginal and won with a small majority. The Mp's who have to face there constituents are at the front end and get the feedback whilst starmer cares little for them as there job of voting is now over. The party is held together by Starmer, he lets go and it falls apart as the members all belong to various groups within like an umbrella company and to much power can be self destructive.

I am not sure if the winter fuel allowance debacle was:

A double win for the chancellor, savings on winter fuel allowance and yes everyone knows older people will die if we get a bad winter but that will just save her more money as no more pension to pay either, I feel that they look at the older generation as just a burden and would be better off without them.

they have played a very predictable political game - blame the predecessors for problems.

That is already wearing very thin and much of it already discounted, they cannot hide behind them excuses forever. The one thing they can blame the predecessors for is getting into number 10.

As I write I am now watching Lammy being evasive about weapons for Ukraine.

Amazing how people like him can get a job that is way over his head, just a waste of space and should be working in warehousing with no public contact.