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Hello and welcome to this week’s Home Front. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Government are still rather besieged by scandals.
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.
Even in an area where Labour is enjoying some success with the Renters’ Rights Bill – where it is delivering a major piece of legislation in no time at all – it has suffered a pair of extraordinary own goals.
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.
Right now, Labour are being tested on their values. Can they practice what they preach and rule with integrity, or will they be a Government that rules with the motto “do as I say, not as I do”?
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.
But, more than that, it is an example of a policy area where Labour have made the moral and ethical case for putting the rights of tenants above landlords.
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.
And yet, we are already seeing the extent to which Labour politicians are not prepared to follow their own Government’s rules.
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.
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Since breaking both the Rushanara Ali and the Lord Alli story, I have received countless tongue-in-cheek texts from MPs and ministers who want me to know that they are “not a landlord”.
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.
When the Tenant Fees Act became law in 2019, I received email after email from renters who were still being charged unlawful fees by unscrupulous agents who thought themselves above the law.
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.
Nonetheless, even Tories think this legislation must go through. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to speak with the Conservative peer Lord Young. He served as a junior minister under Margaret Thatcher and then as a housing minister in the 90s under John Major.
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.
When Section 21 was introduced in 1988, fewer people were renting privately than living in social housing. That is no longer the case; there are now far more private renters. This is partly because social housing has been dissipated by Right to Buy and partly because high house prices have condemned more young adults to renting.
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.
The Tory peer makes a good point; many shared owners are being forced to rent out their homes because they cannot sell them due to cladding issues. This point also highlights the complexity of this new legislation and how easily even well-meaning people may be able to find themselves on the wrong side of it when it comes into force.
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.
Have you got thoughts on or feelings about the Renters’ Rights Bill? I’d love to hear from you. Do email me [email protected]
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, 2025It’s a good catchphrase, but there are serious questions as to whether Labour can hit its own target of 1.5 million homes. And, even if they can “build, baby, build” all those homes, who is going to be able to “buy, baby, buy them”? This is an important question to ask of the new Secretary of State because new data from the Bank of England shows that borrowers may be getting nervous and borrowing less in relation to their income.
The 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.
Unless house prices fall or incomes rise dramatically, that’s a problem.
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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