Oxfam has just reported that Britain’s richest 5 families are wealthier than 12.6 Britons who make up a fifth of the entire UK population. The latest survey from Forbes magazine shows that these 5 fortunes are heavily based on property rather than entrepreneurial innovation. The families listed are those of the Duke of Westminster (who owns 190 acres of prime real estate in Belgravia, London), the property magnates David and Simon Reuben, the Hinduja brothers, the Cadogan family whose wealth has always traditionally come from property, and (the one exception) the Sports Direct investor Mike Ashley. Their combined wealth works out at £28.2bn, an average per family of £5.6bn each. The collective wealth of the poorest 12 million Britons however comes to only £2,230 each. Thus the wealth of the richest 5 families is 2.5 million times greater than that of the bottom fifth. This is grotesque: so what should be done about it? Continue reading
Posted in Housing
Is the home ownership model outdated, and ready for the dustbin of history?
Let us set the scene. You’re a Labour government, it’s 2015, and you’re tasked with tackling economic instability, and health and social problems on a scale not seen in living memory. You need a grand idea, a pillar of policy that states your long term vision, that gives everything you do afterwards solid foundation, and solves a broad range of social problems economic problems.
That centre-piece must be housing. From everywhere from the 20-something in the street, to the floor of TUC conference or what the Guardian calls the “defining economic issue of our time”, a radical housing policy can be One Nation Labour’s solution to inequality, social inclusion and economic stagnation. Just as ‘Education Education Education’ was to New Labour. Continue reading
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Young Labour demands wealth super-tax and scrapping of ‘right to buy’
Young Labour’s first conference with written policy motions has seen delegates vote for radical measures to address the cost of living crisis and kick-start the economy.
The two-day event in Bradford, which concluded yesterday (Sunday) voted to call on the Labour manifesto to include a one off “super-tax” which would seize ten per cent of the assets of the richest ten per cent of the population. A policy package on housing, including ending the ‘right to buy’, introducing rent controls and a mass council house building programme, was also passed. Delegates voted for the strengthening of trade union rights, renationalising the railways, compulsory sex education in schools and a programme of industrial growth among other measures. Continue reading
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Osborne says housing shortage to last a decade – try living that long in a B&B
It’s difficult to portray the contempt with which the Tories view the victims of this acute squeeze on housing. A large majority of the electorate believe the bedroom tax is wrong and unjust, yet when a UN special investigator on housing called on it to be withdrawn, a Tory housing minister excoriated it as a ‘Marxist diatribe’. But if the Tories are so obsessed with the idea that in the housing scarcity they’ve created themselves through their economic policies, every available area of accommodation must be utilised, why do they ignore large areas of London (and also other cities) which the super-rich have bought up as an asset and then left to decay unoccupied by them and unlet? Continue reading
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‘Right to buy’ has brought Rachman back from the dead
Since the 1980s, when Thatcher introduced the ‘right to buy’, some two million tenants of council houses/flats have bought their homes, aided by discounts of up to £60,000. The market, however, has its own way of working. Instead of producing the acclaimed ‘property-owning democracy’, it has resurrected the evil practices of the 1950s and 60s. Practices made notorious by the exploitative Notting Hill landlord Peter Rachman.
In London, over a third of ex-council homes are now owned by private landlords, and privately let at rents of around £230 a week more than council rents. The landlords who have bought up homes from the original ‘right to buy’ tenants now have the opportunity to exploit many would-be council tenants who have been forced into the private rented sector by the sharply dwindling supply of council homes and the lack of build of adequate social housing. Continue reading
