Abolish the landlords!

So, we’ve now one political party explicitly committed to abolishing landlords. Which was, roughly and around and about, the base housing policy of the first 80 or so years of the 20th century in Britain. Which did not, as it happened, work out all that well. But then there’s no part of history too stupid for someone not to want to repeat it, right?

Well, they say they want to abolish landlords but that’s just the headline popularism. What they in fact desire is the abolition - as in those 80 years - of the private landlord and their replacement with the state.

For, if you don’t own the house yet are paying a regular sum to inhabit it you are renting. Which means the existence of the landlord, the person who does own and who collects the rent.

So, the actual plan is the replacement of a competitive market, where millions of landlords compete, with the state as monopoly landlord. Which is, apparently, supposed to lead to an increase in the quantity and quality of housing in the country.

Monopolies are well known for increasing quality and quantity, right?

One of us has actually lived in a real Brezhneviki and we’d just like to point out that it tends not to work out that way. As the inhabitants of Ronan Point found out the hard way.

Tim Worstall