Once again, I find myself saying: I told you so.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has handed me another confirmation of what I have been arguing for years. She has been found letting out her home in London without the proper landlord license.
And yes, she is, as Neil Kinnock once wailed, a Labour MP, part of the party that keeps telling us it has working people’s backs.
But MPs should be focused on politics, not property – and that’s why they shouldn’t be allowed, long term, to be landlords.
The job is to make policy, represent voters, and manage the country. Not to play real-life monopoly.
Yet here we are.
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For a third time in just months, a senior Labour minister has been caught up in a housing scandal. Angela Rayner over her stamp duty, Rushanara Ali with her own landlord saga, and now Rachel Reeves – the Chancellor, no less.
Reeves admitted she failed to get the correct licence before letting out her four-bed in south London. She’s been charging £3,200 a month while missing a £945 selective licence her council actually requires. What a joke.
She called it an ‘inadvertent error’. Applied for it once she was caught. Apologised ‘sincerely’. Case closed, according to Keir Starmer.
But that’s the problem. It shouldn’t be closed.
If your landlord broke the licensing rules, you wouldn’t be satisfied with an apology letter.
The regulations are there to protect the tenants and to ensure homes aren’t run like some kind of cash machine with damp walls.
So when the Chancellor of the Exchequer breaks those same rules, it’s not just bad optics; it’s hypocrisy.
Because while Reeves gears up for the Autumn Budget, which could squeeze households even more, she’s been quietly earning rental income from a property that wasn’t even licensed.
This is similar behaviour to what happens when politicians treat politics like a side hustle and outside earnings like their real career – something we saw far too often under 14 years of Tory rule, with MPs from that beleaguered party earning over £15m in outside income between 2019 and 2023.
You might remember, Labour’s big promise was to stand up for ‘working people’. But I don’t believe property speculators aren’t working people.
It’s time to ban MPs being landlords, once and for all.
You might ask what Reeves should do with her London home while living above Downing Street gratis, but I’d query why the MP for Leeds West needs a house in Dulwich.
MPs need somewhere to stay while the Commons sits, but they should be renting, not speculating.
You can’t serve renters while cashing in from them yourself. It is a conflict of interest so glaring, it should carry a warning sign.
How can Reeves look a renter in the eye while helping push the Renters’ Rights Bill through Parliament? That bill is supposed to make life fairer for tenants. To clamp down on dodgy landlords and protect people from exploitation.
And yet, the woman in charge of the nation’s finances has been operating as an unlicensed landlord herself.
Like Ali, like Rayner, I think Reeves should resign. If you break the rules that would get ordinary people punished, you shouldn’t be writing them.
If the Chancellor can’t follow local housing rules, why should anyone trust her to manage the country’s money?
Reeves says it was a mistake and I have sympathy for that. But it’s not the first time questions have been raised over her conduct either. Freebie rows, exaggerated CVs and now this.
And that’s before you mention her record with the red briefcase.
It’s not about hating wealth. Nobody’s saying MPs should be poor. But if you’re sitting in Parliament voting on laws that shape the housing market, you should not have a financial stake in that same market.
It’s common sense.
Because when lawmakers become landlords, the system stops working for the people who rent. It works for those who own.
Reeves’s apology doesn’t fix that. It just proves it.
And, like I say, it’s not just her. Labour’s had a run of these scandals and it’s hard to get the sense that, when it comes to Britain’s precarious housing market, they are on our side.
Should MPs be allowed to act as landlords?
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Yes, they should be allowed.
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No, it creates a conflict of interest.
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Only under strict regulation.
The budget is weeks away and already Reeves is on the back foot. Public trust is fragile. Every story like this chips away at the sense that Labour might finally be different.
And to top it all off, Keir Starmer has said he wants to be prime minister in 2034.
If Labour wants to be a party of fairness, they need to prove it – because, honestly, if this is what having the ‘grown-ups in the room’ looks like, I’d rather phone social services.
Ban sitting MPs from being landlords. Full stop. No exceptions, no clever excuses about blind trusts or complex family arrangements or mansions in your dog’s name.
Because every time another Labour MP gets caught up in a housing scandal, one thing is made painfully obvious. Labour aren’t only failing to fix the housing crisis – they’re feeding it.
Rachel Reeves has proved me right – again. MPs shouldn’t be landlords. Not because it looks bad; because it is bad.
It’s time to start cleaning up Parliament. Until then, spare us the apologies.
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