You have to love these crooks. Starmer is trying to hang on to his Chancellor Rachel Reeves. He only lost his Deputy Prime Minister a few weeks ago to another property scam. To lose one handbag is careless, to lose two unforgiveable. If Rachel Reeves has to go, he is toast.
Rachel Reeves did not get a license from her local Council to rent out her property. That appears to be unambiguously against the law. The Council web site clearly says:
You can be prosecuted or fined if you’re a landlord or managing agent for a property that needs a licence and do not get one. [1]
Meanwhile Starmer is blagging it. He is pinning his hopes on the scam that people will accept the error was “inadvertent”. That is pretty surprising; Starmer is a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Surely, he is aware that ignorance of the law is not an excuse before the law? Of course he is. And, of course, he knows that his Chancellor has broken the law. He is just trying to blag his way through it.
The local Council is riding to the rescue saying that they only prosecute when people ignore warnings. Fine. But, that does not alter the fact that she appears to have broken the law.
The No. 10 Spokesman said that Starmer still sticks to his word: “The spokesperson said Starmer still stands by his previous assertion that lawmakers cannot be lawbreakers.” So. She’ll have to go. (Though, they are going to try claiming that because the Council does not prosecute people unless they ignore warnings, she hasn’t really broken the law – a mush-mush of a lie, but they might conceivably get away with it in this world where narrative is everything and reality does not come into it, if you have a strong enough narrative which you can superimpose on reality).
Update – 31-10-25
So; it looks like they have pulled it off. The letting agency have issued a statement saying they didn’t follow something up – even while clarifying that it is in fact the landlord’s responsibility to get the license. The narrative management is both skilful and crude at the same time. The PR people in No. 10 released a “redacted” email [2] supposed to show that the letting agency promised to get back to the husband of Rachel Reeves about the license. They didn’t, ergo it is their fault. This allows the supportive Guardian to produce the following headline:
The lettings agency that rented out Rachel Reeves’s family home has taken responsibility for the failure to apply for a council licence and apologised for the error, quashing speculation about the chancellor’s position. [2]
The whole thing is an example of what I believe is called “gaslighting”. When emails are released redacted this is usually because, for example, some security official has determined that for reasons of national security parts of it cannot be made public. In this case, the “redaction” simply serves to spin the story; they release the parts that allow them to blame the letting agency, while disguising the apparent fact that the husband failed to follow something up – as he should have done. We have already been told that it was Rachel Reeves’ husband who was handling the letting agency; so he is likely to be the redacted correspondent in the email. So; in reality, what this amounts to is that Reeves delegated the lucrative letting of her house to her husband who ballsed it up. From an actual legal point of view, it doesn’t matter. The law is that the landlord should have got the license; that appears to be Rachel Reeves. Their story is like someone who did not pay for a TV license saying, “I got my wife to do it and she asked someone else to do, and between them they didn’t do it, so anyway I am not responsible”. Legally this would not wash. They have produced a story which, very superficially, sounds convincing. The friendly media goes along with it. And they say “speculation is quashed”. No matter that anyone who looks at this rationally and without obfuscation, can see it is a fake. That doesn’t matter. If you can convince at least some people that your straw is in fact gold, then you are off the hook.
It is all about media management.
Of course, I don’t care at all. There are things going on in the world that matter, an unnecessary war in Ukraine, a never ending series of massacres and war crimes by Israel (following one by Hamas) in Palestine,; a Chancellor too greedy to pay a small license fee is not one of them. It is just amusing to watch these people squirm and to study their media operations.
Notes