love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

I've just seen the Guardian article - it's the lead too. They've misinterpreted this, I think.

Lol ok Keir
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EX_X5VJWsAA9Jxv?format=jpg&name=large

Let's see how he feels about that in 2024 when they're everywhere.

He’s not going to have to wait that long.

the most damaging Starmer deepfakes so far were his leadership campaign videos were he pretends he isn't Starmer!

it looks like Baddiel has realised that poor people aren't sentient beings and have no internal life to speak of, so it's fine to project a grateful serf type persona onto his cleaner, who just lives to clean his fucking million quid townhouse.

Timely:

Jeremy Corbyn opens up about his relationship with the hostile media. God love him he only wanted us to have nicer way of life & they made a monster out of him. The UK failed Jeremy Corbyn.
pic.twitter.com/fjmYU8jGjU

— Ben (@BenJolly9) May 14, 2020

"I'd never live on the same street as this evil Corbyn fellow.."

yeah your brother is a complete dickhead tbf!

Because it's "un-Labour" we are starting proceedings, as floated previously, to change the party name to #CAPITAL rather than correct the policy.

Well done @ThangamMP 👏 this is how we progress as a party (Progress, get it?) https://t.co/EBECqOpSWo

— Sir Kier Blobby (@kier_sir) May 14, 2020

Debbonaire is a fucking joke

Totally.

Gotta say I don't agree with Corbyn that The Daily Mail and attacks by the papers had an effect. A similar hit piece was run in '17 to an audience that was never going to vote Lab left. What perhaps changed is the whatsapp type conspiracist guff that is shared more widely. Some of which has been saved for Starmer today.

latest kantar poll has a big tory surge, so perhaps having a very agreeable tory in disguise with oh so impressive approval ratings as LOTO doesn't really amount to shit and not enough ppl actually give a fuck about Boris getting slightly sweated for 15 minutes on PMQ as some suggest is the model of a govt being held to account. They used to accuse New Labour of electoral bribery via tax credits but now Rishi is in a position where he is in a game of electoral bribery to the point where they might drop an unprecedented 10-15 pts within weeks or even days if he fucks with the furlough! When this does happen I'd rather have a Labour Leader who wasn't Starmer and wasn't surrounded by some of the garbage in his shadow cabinet. But hey ho, I'll probably never vote Labour again in my life anyway tbh.

Thangnam is my local MP and got my vote in the last election, glad to see she has not got my back in the slightest. Top work.

Biden Proposal: Cancel Rent And Mortgage Payments; “Not Paid Later, Forgiveness” -> Interesting ideas from the moderate democrat presidential candidate. https://t.co/fjaE0e09Mj

— Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP🌹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 (@lloyd_rm) May 14, 2020

Paying For The Bailout:

The million dollar question for Biden’s proposal, as with many other relief ideas, is how will it be paid for. According to The Hill, federal relief funds would be created for landlords and mortgage lenders who would be able to recoup costs. Access to the relief funds would be contingent on abiding by a set of renter protections for five years. As of publication, no estimates on the cost of Biden’s proposal could be found, but it’s safe to say, the figure would be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions.

Possibly positive Labour MPs and ’Corbyn outriders’ are boosting a story that highlights that the government would pay for this, and it should cover mortgages, rather than just going ‘cancel rent, lol’.

latest kantar poll has a big tory surge

No, it doesn't, it has a 7-point swing from the Tories to Labour (but still a big Tory lead).

Some places reported the swing compared to the general election, rather than compared to their last poll in mid-April.

right a 7 pt swing is big though, when this govt is fucking up as much as it is Labour would be 20 pts ahead with a p .....

obv the surge (I'm a polling expert and i'm calling it a surge so rah!) is all down to the furlough extension or as Bush put it the guy at the bar who is getting the drinks in.

striking how much more many lib dem voters hate labour than the tories, even with a guy they likely personally admire now in charge https://t.co/kuM081qZDA

— tristandross (@tristandross) May 15, 2020

oh christ I listened to Today this morning. Brandon Lewis expressing disappointment in Starmer for "playing politics" with a football stadium sized number of care home deaths.

The mayor is 'playing politics'

We needed to secure a deal to keep @TfL operating, but the Government has forced Londoners to pay a very heavy price for doing the right thing on #COVID19 - by hiking TfL fares, stopping the Freedom Pass during busy times and loading TfL with debt. https://t.co/OJeQnZycsG pic.twitter.com/N328yC0tbd

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) May 15, 2020

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/the-numbers-streets-going-rocket-18254318

Govt quietly cancels the "everyone in" funding, meanwhile numbers of homeless set to rise by the thousands, probably boosted by evictees that Debbonaire feels don't need no radical "un-Labour" policies to save them from the streets.

Renters are facing immense worry & hardship as a result of the pandemic. Radical action is needed to support them & nothing should be ruled out including suspension of rents, rent controls and, of course, the longer term supply of the decent homes needed. https://t.co/zf2Lmh0Q1Y

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) May 15, 2020

"nothing should be ruled out" that's the kind of urgency needed here it's an emergency situation.

miss u king

My song.

Russell-Moyle and whoever posting those Biden remarks should also look at this:

House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK

— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020

<3 Big John but his policy proposal document on this that was floated prior to Starmer taking over was uselessly vague.

Saying 'nothing should be ruled out' is also uselessly vague. If Biden can propose a non-means-tested government bailout of renters and mortgage-holders, the Labour left can too. As the above tweet indicates, though, that doesn't come without strings.

"nothing should be ruled out including suspension of rents, rent controls"

not my definition of vague

This was his policy before Starmer took over and people are still arguing over whether that means suspension for everyone or just for some, whether suspension is the same as cancellation and whether, if suspended, the government would pick up the tab or the proposal is to pressure the Conservatives into removing the UK from the jurisdiction of the ECHR to ensure that the burden falls on landlords.

Labour were in a kind of leaderless and useless inertia for the start of this pandemic. I'm a believer in anything is possible with the political will to execute it. Why are radical policies that kill the poor and disabled always so easy to iron the kinks out of and run roughshod over laws with. Yet radical policies that cause inconvenience to the wealthy have to be thoughtful and nuanced and lawyered to the point of absolute legally watertight. Sorry SV I'll never agree with you on this.

It's not just attaching 'strings' is it? I can't see the piece my tweet linked to but basically the Democrats are being dragged away from a progressive solution because the right will shout about the cost. A lot of Democrats probably agree so you are looking at rent strike action to win concessions.

Very clear Labour in the UK aren't going to pull their finger out either.

Yet radical policies that cause inconvenience to the wealthy have to be thoughtful and nuanced and lawyered to the point of absolute legally watertight

The short answer is that the legal system is set up to protect capital and you need to find a way to circumvent that which isn't just 'let's ignore the law'. What'll inevitably happen is it's challenged, the landlords win and get massive amounts of compensation, against a backdrop of chaos. You can either change the law (and remove the ECHR) to prevent this or you can start from the position that the government will pay one way or another and put a structured scheme in place, in line with the Omar one Biden seems to be referencing.

The alternative is a ground-up rent strike. That's not going to win concessions but it'll likely generate so much debt that it'll be impossible for anyone to recoup.

"The short answer is that the legal system is set up to protect capital and you need to find a way to circumvent that"

just accepting this imbalance and not challenging it is everything that has been wrong with Labour in my lifetime and why I'll probably never get a chance to vote for them in my lifetime.

That's fine but you have to work through what that means - which in this case is removing the UK from the ECHR. That's something Labour could embrace if it wanted to, in line with broader Lexit positions on disengaging from international commercial / legal jurisdictions.

The alternative is a ground-up rent strike. That's not going to win concessions but it'll likely generate so much debt that it'll be impossible for anyone to recoup.

― ShariVari, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

My angle was that a threat that could be carried out would mean negotiation and a deal that was fair to renters.

That negotiation can only happen at an individual level without the government being on the hook, i think. Allowing people to rack up unpayable debt with a freeze on evictions and no possibility of your landlord forcing your into bankruptcy for two years (which is the current Labour position aiui) means that huge amounts of completely worthless debt will accrue and you'll either have mass bankruptcy with nobody getting paid back or landlords will be effectively forced to accept X Pence in the Pound to write it off.

The government stepping in to force landlords to negotiate cuts, on the other hand, would fall into the same ECHR trap as cancellation.

There's already a state mechanism for assisting with rents for people who can't pay and advocating for a massive expansion of housing benefit seems more likely to be successful.

The Tories look like they're down 3, not up 6 as above:

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 51% (-3)
LAB: 32% (+4)
LDEM: 7% (-2)
GRN: 2% (-2)
BREX: 2% (+1)

via @KantarPublic, 07 - 11 May
Chgs. w/ 20 Aprhttps://t.co/xDE4qWuDxR

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 15, 2020

If Starmer isn't embarrassed by Debbonaire's comments to the Fabians and that is a position on landlords they are happy with I'd say get used to the idea that huge swathes of the electorate won't turn out for you in 2024 if that is all you have to offer. Thousands of them won't even be able to get on the electoral register.

There's already a state mechanism for assisting with rents for people who can't pay and advocating for a massive expansion of housing benefit seems more likely to be successful.

― ShariVari, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I don't see this kind of bailout happening rn. With Labour currently absent it's good to see some kind of organising for rent strikes. Worth a go given the numbers of people at risk.

The more people stop paying their rent, the more an expansion of housing benefit and the Omar/Biden proposals become a bailout of landlords rather than assistance to renters. That makes them more likely to happen to happen, imo, so good luck to the strikers.

If the Tories really believed in free-market principles they would be allowing rents to fall to reflect demand.

Anecdotally I think this might already be happening - I know someone who had to move during the lockdown and asking prices appear to have dropped substantially, even in Central London. This doesn't help the vast majority of renters who are already in the middle of tenancies and can't pay rent full stop but there may be substantial room for renegotiation later down the line if things carry on the way they are.

Asking prices are doing crazy shit. I've been looking around where I live and a few weeks ago there were some places going for £1k less than you'd expect. I suspect this was a flood of desperate AirBNB hosts trying to coverage the mortgage quickly, mind

airbnb vanishing as a possibility has had a big downward effect on rents yes

a rentstrike would highlight how incredibly expensive it is for the govt just to be bailing out private landlords: one-off buyback of rental properties very quickly* much much cheaper (i linked a thing abt this upthread)

(which is definitely a demand rentstikers shd be very clearly making)

If the idea of long-term remote-working takes off, it's going to a wild time in the housing market.

What if any are the current Labour proposals for supporting people who rack up unsustainable or unpayable arrears under their policy? That's the bit that seems to be missing from the debate right now.

A one-off buyback of rental properties would represent an absolutely gigantic transfer of wealth from the government to small-time investors. It'd be interesting to see what would happen with all that money suddenly sloshing around in the economy that would otherwise be sitting in property. Obviously there are very few productive places for that money to be going right now, but during reconstruction? It's got to come in handy.

Every fucker would be buying pubs or starting microbreweries.

utopia

one-off buyback of rental properties very quickly* much much cheaper (i linked a thing abt this upthread)

(which is definitely a demand rentstikers shd be very clearly making)

― mark s, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

They aren't.

Proud to be a member of @LDNRentersUnion.

These 5 demands are exactly what we need in this crisis.

Would be great if @UKLabour & @ThangamMP could listen to the housing movement and adopt these proposals too.

Join the campaign here 👉 https://t.co/jNQXbAd1gK pic.twitter.com/5q7ZcIiXV3

— Aidan Harper (@Aidan_Harper_) May 15, 2020

"No Borders In Housing"

I too like having the practical convenience of having a toilet a few feet away from my bed.

Not in the kitchen? That's some milquetoast shit right there.

chamber pot or you're a Tory

Actually I think you'll find I'm as much a Guardian-reading liberal as the next man and *I* have a woman who comes round to empty it for me. Doesn't everyone?