‘Rogue Landlord’ Scandal Threatens UK’s Finance Minister
The British government’s rules are so complex that even its own ministers have found themselves unable to follow them, with the country’s number two, the Chancellor, misleading the Prime Minister and the nation about a house in London.
Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance) Rachel Reeves is less than a month away from presenting the much-anticipated and increasingly feared national budget, but she has been plunged into a scandal of her own making and which her boss, the Prime Minister, hastened to fire, to save his job as much as hers. It was revealed that Reeves had failed to apply for a $1,300 license – a tax on landlords disguised as a tenant protection scheme, an impartial observer might conclude – for a London home she owns and has been renting since moving into an official government residence.
While Reeves and the Prime Minister have attempted to sweep the matter under the rug by portraying it as an honest and unintentional mistake, and the letting agent employed by Reeves was even apparently willing to take the fall, none of this changes several key facts of the case, some of which are obviously politically damaging. These factors are also exaggerated by the fact that before taking office Starmer had made so much noise about probity, holding the government of the day to account for even the slightest breach of the rules and absolutely promising to run a clean government in the future.
“Law breakers cannot be lawmakers,” said pious Sir Keir when it was discovered that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been given a slice of birthday cake on his birthday in the Downing Street Cabinet Room. There has been a lot of talk about restoring trust in politics and getting adults back in the room. Now those words are coming back to bite.
This is the fundamental failure and shame that should characterize a government that creates rules and systems so complicated that even its own ministers cannot, in good faith, stick to the law. In such cases, bad governance is a far worse crime against the British public than failure to follow the rules, although almost as bad is treating these breaches as honest mistakes when the ordinary public would have no such leeway. In Reeves’ case, she has been an enthusiastic advocate for these same landlord licensing rules and was writing in favor of them just last week.
Being on the public stage lambasting rogue landlords and demanding licenses while being, allegedly, blithely oblivious to your own violation of those same rules, requires asking very fundamental questions about competence, a disaster for the minister charged with running the entire UK economy and making tax and spending decisions that impact the lives of millions.
Today, The times states that Reeves was “reprimanded” by the Prime Minister for admitting she had “misled” him about the nature of the “unintentional error” of not having her landlord’s license in place and paid for. Additionally, it notes that she risks “being ordered to return more than £41,000 that her tenants have paid in rent. She could also face a civil penalty of up to £30,000 and be added to the national database of ‘rogue landlords’.”
It turns out that the initial claim that Reeves didn’t know she needed a license — even though, as noted, she had campaigned politically on their behalf — simply wasn’t true. Their rental agent had told them in writing that they needed it, but they didn’t do it.
The problem for Starmer is that even if the already unpopular Reeves damages his government’s reputation, his political destiny and his are linked. As damaging as this may be to the public’s wider sense of trust in politics, Starmer will save his skin.
