Jeremy Corbyn is Either a Brilliant Troll or a Total Twat

The ‘Right To Buy’ policy that lets council tenants buy their homes at a big discount should be extended to the tenants of private landlords, a Labour leadership contender has said.

Jeremy Corbyn said Labour needed to go further in tackling the housing crisis and that extending Right To Buy could help more people find a secure place to live.

“We know that Generation Rent faces an uphill struggle simply to get into long-term housing. We have seen some good ideas from Labour to establish more secure tenancies for renters. Now we need to go further and think of new ways to get more people into secure housing,” he said.

“So why not go with Right to Buy, with the same discounts as offered by way of subsidised mortgage rates, but for private tenants and funded by withdrawing the £14 billion tax allowances currently given to Buy to Let landlords?

“I believe this idea could open up the possibility of real secure housing for many currently faced with insecurity and high rents.”

Mr Corbyn said he would be launching a consultation on the policy over the summer as part of a package of new policies to solve the housing crisis.

The Conservatives are committed to extending Right To Buy to the tenants of housing associations – which are private, not-for-profit landlords. 

If adopted, Mr Corbyn’s proposed policy would extend the same scheme to for-profit private landlords.

Right To Buy has previously been criticised by housing campaigners who say it has depleted the council housing stock and transferred it into the hands of private landlords.

Across London well over a third of one-time council homes are now rented privately to tenants – often at rents far higher than would be collected by local authorities. 

Okay, so you disagree with the policies of past governments who sold off council-housing at discounted rates under right-to-buy-schemes.  Because they reduced the stock of social housing, without any real plan to replace them for those who can't afford to buy a home.  I get that entirely.  It's understandable to say the least.

And you've floated plans in the past about allowing councils to have the 'right to buy' back properties left empty for more than six months.  A little more debatable, but I see where you're coming from.

After all, how many flats, houses, and entire buildings in Britain are currently empty having been bought up by largely foreign speculators, many billionaires or multi-millionaires, purely as strategic investment-hedges ?

And so now you want to go after small-time landlords, and forcibly deprive them of rented properties that for all you know may represent their primary income ?  Properties that are currently rented.  That currently house families.  To give them the 'right to buy' the properties at the expense of the previous generations who obtained the properties under past evil misguided 'rent to buy' policies.  Are you nuts ?

I mean, I know the reason you're being allowed the farce of participating in the leadership race for Labour is that you and what you are seen to represent is discredited, and rejected, but I would hope that as a political leader, you were genuine, were honest in the undertaking.  In which case...are you nuts ?  This is the opposition's dream come true, whether we are talking your (at very best) centre-right opponents in your own party, or the right-wing assholes in the Conservative party.

Maybe you're really talking not about ordinary landlords, but about the ownership of vast swathes of rental property by large corporate interests.  As if they wouldn't rather re-develop or sell off property rather than micro-manage individual units.  Even then, going after them, and threatening to take their property, would look bad to a very large part of the electorate, smacking as it does of old-school socialism.  As in actual socialism*, as opposed to the current schoolyard-taunts of referring to anyone slightly marginally to the left of the current ruling parties as 'socialist', because 'nah-nah poopy head'...

You could reform these policies in ways that encourage the restocking of social housing, and take other steps to build up the housing-stock generally, but instead, your proposal is to forcibly take the properties from people who obtained them (one would hope) legally and fairly, without them having any say in the matter of suddenly being deprived of what could be a massive personal investment.

I see on LabourList that some commentators think this is a brilliant 'tongue in cheek' move that will somehow shame the Tory's own 'Right to Buy' policies.  For their own sakes, I hope they are joking too.

Oh, and if the argument is that the rents are too high -- in London that is...not that your policies are likely to be exclusive to London -- Well, why are they too high ?  Is it that the landlords are just greedy ?  Or is it that the lack of investment in new housing-stock, the continuation of 'right to buy' policies, the flood of economic migrants, the empty investment-properties and the rest of it, have driven up both the (inflated) valuation of the properties and the expenses of the owners whether that be in the form of taxes and/or their own living expenses, such that they have no choice but to raise the rents ?

I honestly don't know for sure.  Does Corbyn ?


* And if embracing actual socialism is what Corbyn is genuinely doing, then more power to him I guess.  As someone whose own politics would be at least ever so slightly to the right of his if so, I still reserve the right to call him a twat.