Letters: pantomime dames are here to stay

The leasehold scam

Sir: In June 2018, Rishi Sunak told me in a Bethnal Green living room that leasehold is ‘a scam’ (‘Flat broke’, 9 December). At party conference, Sunak portrayed himself as a truth-teller who would take on the vested interests who have held back this country for so long. I am therefore baffled why his government’s signature homeownership policy, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, is such a modest package after six years of government and Law Commission work that has cost millions and which concluded that leasehold was fundamentally flawed. England and Wales are outliers in the world for persisting with this rip-off system.

Ending leasehold is the hegemonic programme the Conservatives so badly need. Michael Gove was right to recognise that earlier this year. Freeing leaseholders from rapacious freeholder overlords would be a project in popular capitalism that we haven’t seen since Margaret Thatcher’s Right-to-Buy revolution. Indeed, Thatcher saw leasehold enfranchisement as its sequel, and on her last day as prime minister greenlit a draft bill on commonhold – leasehold’s replacement.