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Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, despite his known relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is the latest in a series of sagas casting a long shadow over Labour.
From the resignation of former homelessness minister Rushanara Ali over breaches of her own department’s Renters’ Rights Bill to my latest story on Labour’s housing hypocrisy, the tale of how Labour super-donor and peer Lord Waheed Alli also breached the forthcoming legislation by evicting his tenants and hiking the rent by over £1,000.
The Renters’ Rights Bill, which is currently going through its final amendment stage in the House of Lords before receiving Royal Assent, is a landmark piece of legislation. It is the biggest shake-up of power dynamics between tenants and landlords for over 30 years.
In doing so, Labour have asked landlords – including those who sit in Parliament – to accept changes which may be inconvenient, such as longer notice periods, tighter eviction rules and checks on rent hikes, because it is for the greater good of almost 5 million privately rented households.
Rushanara Ali and Lord Alli have provided Labour with uncomfortable test cases in how the laws will change the ways landlords need to operate. They won’t be the first whose actions fall outside of the forthcoming rules, and they certainly won’t be the last.
square LABOUR PARTY ExplainedThe 16 Labour scandals and controversies in 14 months of power
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But, for every one of those, there will be a landlord MP taking a much closer look at their affairs to make sure they haven’t opened themselves up to a scandal. The resignation of Rushanara Ali has wounded Labour. As a junior minister, she was well-regarded and, broadly, well-liked in Westminster. She was not supposed to be a loose cannon.
Expect the same to happen with the Renters’ Rights Act, because if we know anything about the private rented sector, it is an unruly place.
Lord Young has seen the private renting crisis through from start to present day because he was in the government that introduced the “no fault” Section 21 evictions that Labour are now banning.
However you slice it, even Lord Young thinks renters need proper protections. To that end, he has been adding amendments to the bill to make it fairer in his eyes. One is to make sure that shared owners are still able to relet their homes if they are trying to sell and a sale falls through.
If Labour want to be taken seriously, it will need to make sure that none of those rule-breakers – inadvertent or otherwise – are their own people, because the stench of hypocrisy that has engulfed the Government won’t wash with voters.
Key housing
On the subject of Government ministers, I am enjoying the new Housing Secretary’s social media videos. Steve Reed, the new Secretary of State for Housing, has been posting short videos à la Robert Jenrick on Instagram and Twitter in which he repeats the YIMBY slogan “build, baby, build”.
New Housing Secretary Steve Reed has said the government is "absolutely committed" to getting 1.5 million new homes built in England by 2029, saying "it's what we're going to do".He inherited the housing brief in last week's reshuffle after Angela Rayner resigned… pic.twitter.com/aJGCoKcdBF
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) September 12, 2025The proportion of lending to borrowers with a high loan-to-income (LTI) ratio decreased by 3.7 percentage points from the previous quarter to 41.5%, the largest decrease since 2023 Q1, and was 1.0 percentage points lower than a year earlier.
As ever, there is a gulf between social media and reality.
Vicky’s pick
As Epstein is back in the news, I’m going to recommend a brilliant book by Australian writer Lucia-Osborne Crowley called The Lasting Harm, which focuses on the impact of the abuse women suffered at the hands of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell has had on their victims and survivors. Do give it a read.
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