A FOUR-WEEK reprieve for renters, announced on the last working day before the lockdown ban on evictions was due to expire, tells us a lot about this government.
Mounting pressure from tenants’ unions, charities and medical experts has forced Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s hand.
A letter from 16 organisations, including London Renters Union, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners, warns that lifting the evictions ban could lead to a sudden upsurge in Covid-19 infections.
As with the U-turn on student grades at the start of the week, ministers have caved at the last minute to an unusual alliance of grassroots organisations, locally organised street mobilisations or the threat of them, trade unions and professional bodies.
The timing of both U-turns is an indication of incompetence: a government that was on top of the job would have anticipated the uproar that using an algorithm to impose downgrades to school students’ results was going to cause. In the event, the whole debacle was largely outsourced to Ofqual, a supposedly politically neutral agency whose contortions over last weekend showed up the institutional chaos of the “post-political” state where technocrats are deployed to mask the reality of ruling-class power.
Similarly, the expiry of the evictions ban was by its nature predictable. It was due to happen on a known date. Instead of using the months of warning available to prepare for it, ministers seem almost taken by surprise. Having no policy on rent arrears to announce, they instead assure us that one is being worked on and we’ll hear more about it soon.
Labour confines itself to criticisms of the government’s competence, when the political space is open to make far more radical interventions.
The school grades U-turn drew attention to the exam system Ofqual’s infamous algorithm was designed to imitate and the way results are rationed to fit a predetermined pattern every year.
The evictions ban addressed government concerns over social stability – sudden mass homelessness as a result of the lockdown’s impact on household incomes would inflame dangerous tensions – and public health outcomes – it is difficult to impose a lockdown on movement if people are being evicted from their homes. These linked but distinct purposes explain the range of organisations calling for an extension, and the prominent place of medical professionals among them points to yet another government failure – Covid-19 has not been suppressed and Britain is not in a position to contain new outbreaks.
But the ban also shines a spotlight on the extraordinary power British landlords have over tenants, with greater freedom to evict people at shorter notice than in almost any other European country, no cap on their ability to raise rents and, in section 21 evictions, the continuing right to evict people without being required to provide a reason for doing so.
Boris Johnson – or Dominic Cummings, at any rate – knows that consent to the existing economic and social order is fragile.
Public confidence in every pillar of the Establishment – Parliament, banks, corporations, media, the police, even the monarchy – is low. The Brexit vote and the Jeremy Corbyn project pointed to a widespread desire for a new direction; so far, Johnson’s political success has rested on his ability to pretend that he represents one.
This is why the government has backed down, quickly, when challenged on student grades or rents, even when the “official” opposition is half-hearted to the point of feebleness. It is aware that Covid-19 is placing extreme strains on a system already widely discredited and alert to the possibility of losing control.
The socialist left cannot be satisfied with these partial, temporary retreats, which leave the entire oppressive architecture of neoliberal capitalism intact. It must use each U-turn to push for further advances. Britain’s private rented housing sector is an extortionate racket. High time the balance of power between landlord and tenant was reset.
