In the damp, grey circus that is British governance, we are currently being treated to a particularly tedious act of performative concern. Angela Rayner—the Labour Party’s designated 'authentic' voice for whenever they need to remind the public that they haven’t entirely become a subsidiary of a private equity firm—has emerged to decry the 'crippling ground rents' faced by leaseholders. It is a classic move from the Labour playbook: identify a systemic failure that has existed for centuries, wait until you are technically in a position to do something about it, and then immediately begin a public debate about whether or not doing that thing might accidentally offend a billionaire in a gilet.

The core of the issue is the leasehold system, a charmingly medieval relic that allows 'owners' to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for the privilege of being a high-end tenant to a 'faceless company.' In the UK, you don’t own your home; you own a temporary permission slip to exist within its walls, provided you keep paying a tribute to some offshore entity that owns the dirt beneath your floorboards. Rayner is shocked—shocked!—that this system, which her party has had decades to influence, is still functioning exactly as intended. The 'titanic battle' she describes is not between good and evil; it is a bureaucratic skirmish between a party that wants to look like it cares and a financial sector that knows it doesn’t have to.

At the center of this theatrical production is Keir Starmer, a man who possesses the natural warmth of a refrigerated legal brief. We are told he made a 'powerful case' for serving the struggling. One can only imagine the raw, unfiltered intensity of Starmer making a case; it likely involved several PowerPoint slides on 'fiscal responsibility' and a stern look that suggested he might, if pushed, consider forming a committee to investigate the possibility of a future consultation. This is the 'hope' the British public voted for: a choice between the Tories, who would happily sell your internal organs to a hedge fund for a 2% bump in the FTSE, and Labour, who will express deep, soulful empathy while the hedge fund harvests your kidneys anyway.

Rayner’s rhetoric about 'hard-working leaseholders' versus 'rich investors' is a masterpiece of the vapid binary. It ignores the inconvenient truth that the 'rich investors' are often the very pension funds that the 'hard-working leaseholders' are relying on for a retirement that will never come. The system is a snake eating its own tail, and the Labour cabinet is simply arguing over which end of the snake looks better on camera. To suggest that there is a 'battle' is to imply that there are two opposing forces. In reality, there is only one force—Capital—and a group of politicians desperately trying to figure out how to placate it without looking like complete sell-outs to the people currently paying £500 a year for the right to have a roof that leaks.

The 'cost of living emergency' is not, as Rayner suggests, a crisis 'years in the making.' It is the logical conclusion of a society that has decided that housing is a speculative asset class rather than a human necessity. For two decades, living standards have been crushed, not by some mysterious 'sense' of a system stacked against people, but by the very policies that both sides of the aisle have rubber-stamped. The Right spent fourteen years treating the country like a fire sale, and the Left spent that same time trying to prove they were 'economically credible' by promising not to change anything important.

Now, we are told that the Prime Minister wants a government that 'serves the interests of those struggling.' It is a lovely sentiment, perfect for a fridge magnet or a particularly desperate campaign leaflet. But if the interests of the struggling conflict with the interests of the 'faceless companies' that hold the leases, we all know who wins. The 'investors' provide the growth, the 'markets' provide the stability, and the 'families' provide the ground rent. It is a symbiotic relationship in the same way that a tapeworm has a symbiotic relationship with its host.

Rayner asks if the Labour party is for rich investors or hard-working leaseholders. The answer, which she knows but cannot say, is 'yes.' They are for both, in the same way a butcher is 'for' both the cow and the steak. They will cap the ground rent just enough to stop a riot, but not enough to stop the dividends. They will 'fight' this battle in the media while ensuring the legislation is sufficiently riddled with loopholes to keep the City of London from having a panic attack. It is a weary, predictable dance. We are expected to applaud the effort while the walls of the leasehold traps continue to close in. Ultimately, the only thing being 'reformed' here is the public’s perception of Labour’s soul—and even that seems like a lost cause.