The Revenge Of the Evictions

I appreciate that the title of this blog makes no sense. But nothing does these days. So why change it?

Anyway.

As a child I discovered that you could completely and utterly lose an argument on the basis of the facts to hand, but as long as your last words were “yeah, but, still…” you could leave with your reputation for reasoned argument in tact, and your argument technically undefeated.

All political debate is rendered thus. So this blog means nothing. These words, however true, however based in actual reality, change nothing.

However, for what it’s worth – here are my views on the Section 21 proposals announced this morning.

According to the BBC, the Tories are ending No Fault evictions –

Residential tenants at present can be turfed out for no reason at all, even if it’s just because the landlord’s daughter takes a dislike to you and asks daddy to turf you out as punishment for being vewy vewy wude (happened to my neighbour. Feudal eh?). This process is formally initiated by serving a Section 21 notice – a so-called ‘no fault eviction’ – as no reason has to be formally stated for the eviction, unlike anywhere else on the planet.

Except….well, except.

The Tories actually only plan to consult on the ending of Section 21 notices. So they are planning to consider if they might.

One day.

Possibly.

This is, without any shadow of a doubt, not a plan to ban them now.

And…well, the Tories have no absolute majority in the commons. They are so terrified of wrecking amendments that they dare not even propose legislation. So even if they do decide it might be a good idea – and we have no idea if they will – then they cannot turn it into law, because they cannot get it through the commons.

Any even if they did one day decide to ban Section 21 notices, and reality ceased to be important in these things and they could actually get the legislation through the commons – this is only the policy of a Theresa May government, and she has said she’s leaving soon, and there’s no plan to finish the consultation before she goes – so her successor will be in charge of implementing this policy, and there’s no reason at all to think that his or her manifesto will include it, as they won’t in any way be bound by May’s previous promises (much like May, actually).

Even if all of that was true, they also propose to consult on making it easier for landlors to evict tenants in rent arrears – at present quite a lengthy process. And they are not banning exorbitant rent increases. So if a landlord wants to evict a tenant for no reason, they can simply raise the rent fivefold. And it will be easier to evict them.

I get that the Tories have realised they face an existential crises – that with collapsing home ownership, they will disappear as a party, but…

…to launch a policy that won’t actually happen, but the announcement of which will piss off their core support base (1 in 5 Tory MPs are landlords, and a large slice of Tory voters) at a time when their existing support base is pretty pissed off, all to attract the votes of people whose votes won’t actually be attracted because it won’t happen, and if it did, would make the situation worse for them, just seems….a bit mad?

Well, yeah, but.

Still.