UK election at-a-glance: Rent, deposits and a poodle
Policy of the day: Rent asunder
Having yesterday targeted older voters with a pension rebate, the opposition Labour party today appealed to private-sector renters as the party threatened to “put bad landlords out of business” and introduce rent controls in England. People in the 25-to-34 age group make up the largest proportion of the rental market, and there is concern that young adults are being priced out of ever buying property as rent takes up an increasing slice of income.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wants to cap rent increases at the national inflation rate and submit private landlords to the jeopardy of a “property MOT” threatening forced repayment of rent if housing is substandard. The Conservatives, who would end “no-fault” evictions, countered that Labour’s plans would “hurt the renters they claim to want to help by hiking up rents.” The Greens would also introduce rent controls, while the Liberal Democrats would introduce index-linked controls on rent increases.
With friends like these…
Tony Blair dominated the news agenda for the three successive general elections he won, and the former Labour leader rolled back the years with a succession of headline-generating quotes on Monday morning at a Reuters event in London.
As may be expected, he tore into Boris Johnson, but equally into his own successor Jeremy Corbyn, saying “The public aren’t convinced either main party deserve to win this election outright. They’re peddling two sets of fantasies and both, as majority governments, pose a risk it would be unwise for the country to take.”
Blair, a committed Europhile who plotted a more centrist course than Corbyn, accused both main parties of “populism running riot,” said the UK was “a mess,” and called the current election “the weirdest of my lifetime,” adding “our politics is utterly dysfunctional.”
In other you’re-not-helping-much news, foreign secretary Dominic Raab won’t have enjoyed listening to Ian Taylor, his predecessor as Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, urging constituents to vote Lib Dem. The area has been safely Conservative for more than a century, but locals voted Remain in the referendum and Taylor says that “voting now will need to be tactical rather than by traditional allegiance.”
Straight back in the saddle
Downing Street has published plans to reconvene parliament on Tuesday 17 December if the Conservatives win a majority. That first day would be spent swearing in new MPs, possibly speeding up the process by having two queues rather than one, plus the new Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who replaces John Bercow.
Boris Johnson’s government would then set out its legislative agenda via a State Opening of Parliament and a Queen’s Speech with “reduced ceremonial elements” two days later, as part of Johnson’s pledge to present parliament with Brexit legislation before Christmas. If another party wins - or if Johnson doesn’t have a majority - the whole process is likely to wait until after Christmas.
Insults of the day
Not to encourage name-calling, but sometimes it’s worth checking in on the political quotes to see whether the invective is inventive. The Conservatives’ attack phrase of the day came when high-rollers Matt Hancock and Nicky Morgan unveiled a poster decrying Jeremy Corbyn, who has declared his intention to stay neutral in a second Brexit referendum if his Labour party win, as “the prime ditherer”. On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats’ Chuka Umunna warned that Boris Johnson would turn the UK into a “vassal state” of the US by becoming Donald Trump’s “poodle”. With two weeks of the campaign to go, more insults are sure to follow.
UK election jargon buster: Deposit
Some say politics is all about money, and you certainly need some to run as a candidate in a UK election. Specifically, £500 ($645), which must be paid by each candidate before his or her nomination papers can be accepted.
It’s known as a deposit because it is returned after the election to any candidate winning five percent or more of the votes (until 1985, the threshold was 12.5 percent). It’s therefore hugely embarrassing for a major party candidate to lose their deposit.
The idea is to prevent spurious candidacies clogging up the democratic process, and although critics say the cost prevents open democracy - the Electoral Commission has suggested scrapping deposits for general elections - it could be worse: the cost in 1918 was $193 - equal to more than $9,000 now.
