The UK government’s rules are so complex even its own government ministers have found themselves unable to comply with them, with the country’s second-in-command the Chancellor having been found to have misled the Prime Minister and nation over a London home.
Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Rachel Reeves is less than a month from setting out the hotly anticipated and increasingly feared national budget, yet she has been engulfed in a scandal of her own making which her boss the Prime Minister has rushed to dismiss, to save her job as much as his own. It has been revealed that Reeves failed to apply for a $1,300 license — a tax on landlords dressed up as a tenant protection scheme, a dispassionate observer might conclude — on a London home she owns and has been renting out since she moved into an official government residence.
While Reeves and the Prime Minister have attempted to brush the matter under the carpet as describing it as an honest and inadvertent mistake, and the letting agent employed by Reeves even apparently ready to take the fall, none of this changes several key facts in the case, some of which are obviously politically damaging. These factors are also exaggerated by the fact that before taking office Starmer had made so much noise about probity, holding the government of the day to account for even the smallest breaches of the rules, and absolutely promising to lead an unimpeachable government in future.
“Lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers”, said pious Sir Keir when it was found Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been given a slice of birthday cake on his birthday in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street. Much noise was made about restoring trust in politics and the grown ups being back in the room. Now these words come back to bite.
There is the basic failure and shame that should attend a government that creates rules and systems so complicated that even its own ministers can’t, in good faith, cleave to the law. In such instances the bad governance is far worse a crime against the British public than the rule-breaking, although having those breaches written off as honest mistakes when the ordinary public wouldn’t be afforded such leeway is very nearly as bad. In Reeves’ case, she has been an enthusiastic campaigner in favour of these very landlord licensing rules and was writing in their favour only last week.
To be on the public stage castigating rogue landlords and demanding licensing while at the same time being, allegedly, blithely unaware of your own breaking of those same rules demands very basic questions about competency to be asked, a disaster for the government minister entrusted with running the whole British economy and making decisions on tax and spend that impact the lives of millions.
Today, The Times states Reeves was “reprimanded” by the Prime Minister for admitting she had “misled” him about the nature of the “inadvertent mistake” of not having her landlord licence in place and paid for. Further, it notes she faces the possibility of “being ordered to hand back more than £41,000 that her tenants have paid in rent. She could also face a civil fine of up to £30,000 and be added to the national “rogue landlord” database.”
It transpires the initial claim that Reeves didn’t know she needed a licence — despite, as expressed, having politically campaigned in favour of them — simply wasn’t true. They’d been told they needed one by their letting agent in writing and failed to do so.
The problem for Starmer is that while already unpopular Reeves is damaging the reputation of his government, his political fate and hers are shackled together. As harmful to wider feelings of public trust in politics as it may be, Starmer will save his own skin.
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