Angela Rayner urges Keir Starmer to pick fights with landlords

Former deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner has told Sir Keir Starmer to ‘pick more fights’ with landlords and freeholders.

At a fundraising dinner in central London, the former housing secretary said voters feel the system is ‘rigged against them’, the Daily Telegraph reports.

She went on to say that she expects a tougher response from the government, particularly on housing.

Ms Rayner’s intervention follows a warning last week that Labour was ‘running out of time’ to shift direction before May’s local elections.

Pick more fights

She described financial strain among working households, including those in professional roles who are taking on additional jobs yet still struggling to meet monthly costs.

Ms Rayner said: “They feel that nobody understands and cares about the difficulties they go through.

“And this isn’t just people who you would naturally associate with struggling, naturally associate with poverty.

“These are professional people, people that are working really hard, people that have got two, three jobs and they’re still not able to get to the end of the month with their wage packet.”

She added: “And they need to know they’ve got a government on their side, and they’re impatient for change and I understand their impatience.

“So, I think we have to pick more fights, personally.”

Freehold ‘rips off’ people

Housing featured prominently in the speech, with Ms Rayner focusing on the leasehold system and the role of freeholders collecting ground rent.

Plans set out earlier this year would cap ground rents at £250 annually, before reducing them to peppercorn levels after 40 years, without abolishing leasehold entirely.

She said: “Those people that sold the freehold, that are ripping off people for no money … You may as well lob the money in the street, they’re not doing anything for it.

“People have bought flats and are now being absolutely fleeced.

“We should be standing up for them, we should be saying we’re not having that anymore and I think we have to keep doing that.

“We have to do that with some in the private sector that are taking huge sums of money for children’s centres et cetera when, let’s be honest, they’re not delivering.

“That’s what Bridget [Phillipson] is doing with the new Send reforms.”

Call for rent controls

Meanwhile, tenant campaigners have renewed calls for direct action on landlords and housing costs.

London Renters Union spokesperson Jae Vail told the Morning Star: “Labour is haemorrhaging support across the country over its pro-landlord, pro-developer stance on the housing crisis.

“If the government wants to win any of that support back, it must take on landlords and put our right to a good home first.

“That means introducing rent controls that bring down housing costs and investing in the council homes we need to end the housing crisis for good.”