Aaron Newbury argues that Rachel Reeves is right about something, and the PM should take notice.
Reeves is right about one thing. (Image: Getty)
It’s hard to keep up with scandals these days, as Labour seem to have turned hypocrisy into an Olympic sport. Ministers who spent the last few years hectoring everyone else on ‘standards’ now seem to struggle to keep themselves honest. First we had Louise Haigh’s phone, then Starmer and his flash suits paid for by someone else, Taylor Swift tickets and Rayner’s stamp duty discrepancies.
And now it seems even the Chancellor herself cannot keep her affairs in order.
Yet her actions seem the grossest of all, as she admitted to renting out her central London home without the proper licence, the same kind of offence she once thundered against herself. Her property, in a highly desirable part of South London, was reportedly let for around £3,200 a month – a princely sum by all accounts – all whilst she was living in her taxpayer-funded pad on Downing Street.
Nice work if you can get it.
When asked to explain herself, Reeves called it an “inadvertent mistake”. Apparently her letting agent never mentioned the need for a selective licence. That might wash for a first-time landlord, or someone looking to top up a pension as they try and carve out a decent retirement. But it’s not a great look for the woman running Britain’s economy. When you’ve built your political brand on lecturing others about the importance of following the rules, ignorance of those rules stops being an excuse.
But there is one thing I agree with her on, and you should to.
In 2023, while still languishing on the opposition bench as Shadow Chancellor, Reeves proudly praised Leeds City Council for expanding its own selective licensing scheme, a move she said would crack down on dodgy landlords and guarantee tenants “safe and secure homes.”
She couldn’t have been clearer. “Private landlords will be required by law to obtain a licence,” she wrote, “as everyone deserves a safe and secure home.”
And you know what? She was right about that last bit. Everyone does deserve a safe and secure home, including the tenants of the Chancellor.
This isn’t just another slip-up. It’s a symbol of a government already collapsing under the same hubris it promised to replace. Keir Starmer’s pitch to the country was competence and integrity, yet his Cabinet is beginning to look like a rerun of everything voters thought they’d thrown out.
When a Chancellor can’t follow the basic rules of housing policy, what chance does she have of fixing the country’s finances? Reeves can call it a mistake all she likes, but ordinary landlords wouldn’t get off that easily. If Labour wants to talk about standards, it might start by meeting them.
Because this latest scandal doesn’t just make Reeves look careless, it makes Starmer’s whole government look like it’s already running out of moral credit.
