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Why landlords face wipeout under Labour – and it’s terrible news for renters

Tax threats and red tape are squeezing the life out of the rental sector Source Daily Telegraph 12/10/24 Link Landlord profits have collapsed in the past decade following an onslaught of taxes and red tape, analysis reveals.  Today, Telegraph Money is launching a campaign calling on the Government to end the war on property investors and put a stop to further meddling that risks driving decent landlords out of the market. Years of hostile taxes and tightening red tape have forced investors out, exacerbating the housing shortage and pushing up rents. A London landlord in the higher rate income tax band would have made £2,200 profit on a £500,000 property with a 75pc LTV two-year fixed buy-to-let mortgage in 2013, according to analysis from estate agents Hamptons. In 2024, the same landlord would have made a £1,300 loss despite near-identical mortgage rates.  As a result, supply to the rental market has stalled. Landlords have sold 300,000 more properties than they bought since 2016. Mea
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Labour is haemorrhaging seats and voter trust, figures show

The party lost a further four seats in a wave of 20 council by-elections this week pushing the total to 11 since September Source - Daily Telegraph 12/10/24 Link Labour endured another smattering of defeats at the ballot box this week after a wave of 20 council by-elections were held on Thursday. The governing party endured a net loss of four seats in a series of local contests held across the UK. Conservatives gained two seats from Labour while the Liberal Democrats and Greens took a seat each from them. The by-elections took place across the south, north and midlands, as well as Scotland and Wales. The Sunday Telegraph reported last week that Labour had haemorrhaged 11 council seats in by-elections since September. Although council by-elections tend to have lower turnouts than parliamentary elections, and can be more easily swayed by local issues, senior Labour figures are gearing up for England-wide local elections in May 2025. These elections, for 30 English councils and two new co
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Labour’s investment summit is dead on arrival

The event’s scrappy lead-up illustrates everything that’s going wrong for the Starmer administration Source - Daily Telegraph Link At least they found someone to front it at the last minute. With only days left before the Labour Government’s big investment summit, designed to showcase the stability and growth that will be the major themes of the administration, Poppy Gustafsson – former chief executive of Darktrace – heroically stepped up to fill the post of investment minister. The trouble is, the organisation of the summit has been chaotic, it has been overshadowed by the tax rises looming in the Budget, it has been overtaken by virtue-signalling and it lacks star power. In reality, compared with President Emmanuel Macron’s glittering gatherings at Versailles, this looks like an end-of-the-pier tribute act – and it is already dead on arrival. It was about as close to the deadline as it is possible to get. Gustafsson is a credible choice for the position, having played a key role in b
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Reeves is slowly realising that her policies don’t work in the real world

Labour is setting itself up for a series of embarrassing U-turns Source - Daily Telegraph  Link When Sir Keir Starmer said he would deliver change he could scarcely have believed it would be such a change for the worse.  After all the unforced errors of his Government’s own making, the wheels are already falling off Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, turning her dream machine into a calamitous kit car with many of the parts missing. With three weeks still to go before she scares us with her Halloween Budget, the constant media reports of stalled starts, sharp reversals and three-point turns on planned tax increases are never-ending.  After reading out a grim fairytale about an imaginary black hole in the public finances, the reality is dawning – her plans for a convoy of tax rises risk causing huge gaps as fiscal revenues collapse rather than increase. Studies by the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) are revealing that rather than increase the funds available for the Labou
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Labour is too weak to resist the pull of the EU

Starmer’s ‘reward’ for closer relations will only be open borders and foreign trawlers in British waters Source - Daily Telegraph Link The nature of the deal that Sir Keir Starmer would like to strike to re-set the supposedly broken relationship between Britain and the European Union is coming to light. It is not looking good. The EU is suggesting demands so painful it is almost as if the British government is being dared to sign it. What began in the summer as discussions around mobility deals between Britain and individual European countries has ballooned into a mobility pact with the entire bloc, as many sceptics predicted, with many other bad ideas attached. Instead of a bilateral agreement with Spain, we now face the possibility of the Government agreeing a youth mobility pact with the entire EU, surrendering more fishing rights, and even taking part in the EU’s scheme to disperse illegal immigrants around the continent. Is there any upside for Britain at all? The youth mobility p
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Labour’s incompetence is having profound implications

Rachel Reeves’s doom-laden hints strike at the heart of savers’ worst fears Source - Daily Telegraph Link The Budget, Rachel Reeves, Tax rises 09 October 2024 1:28pm BST Every Budget statement is preceded by weeks, sometimes months, of fevered speculation.  Think tanks, accountants, investment groups, wealth managers and, yes, journalists work themselves up into a frenzy of breathless analysis of the many rumours swirling around. But the level of interest ahead of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, on October 30, is unprecedented. It will be the first time since 2010 that a Labour chancellor will have the chance to give (or take) from the nation’s pockets – and people are terrified. Partly this is because of the doom-laden hints repeatedly given by Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Reeves. In August the Prime Minister warned this would be a Budget of “pain” and that “things will get worse before they get better” after inheriting an “economic black hole” from the Conservatives. Labour promised in its
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Matthew Lynn Net Zero is becoming synonymous with economic suicide

 There is a reason why every developing country’s plan for industrialisation involves a steel plant. It is critical to everything else Source - Daily Telegraph 02/10/24 Link If any two commodities were central to the industrial revolution, they were coal and steel. Britain pioneered the mass production of both, launching a worldwide transformation that multiplied living standards many times over. And now, ironically, it looks as if, in an almost Maoist pursuit of global leadership in achieving Net Zero, we will be the first major developed country to close them both down. There is just one catch. In reality, that is economic suicide - and time is running out to do anything about it.  It has, in fairness, a certain symbolic symmetry to it, although even Sally Rooney’s editor might turn it down as being a little too cheesy. The UK is now leading the world in shutting the industries that it pioneered, and which powered the modern world. On Monday, we closed the last remaining coal power s
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