Starmer's SLUM LANDLORD LABOUR PARTY!

Right, so Keir Starmer’s position on housing has been in the gutter ever since it was announced that social housing tenants are going to see their rents rise above the rate of inflation in order to apparently pay for new ‘affordable’ housing that may not even be that affordable, but as was almost certain to happen once all those new MPs, the result of Starmer impositions during the selection process, got their feet under the table, it was bound to happen that that high quality candidate claim would end up getting undermined somewhere, by someone and in this case, it just happens to be someone with a great deal to do with housing. I spoke in a recent video on that social housing story about he fact that three of the 5 biggest landlords in parliament now sit on Starmer’s benches, all three of them new intake MPs, so so much for Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party and his pledge to end landlordism, his namesake wet wipe of a Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomes them and now he’s paying the price for it, because the biggest landlord in parliament, is a rogue landlord, a slum landlord, so how can we possibly trust Starmer on housing, when this is the sort of high quality candidate he didn’t just welcome into his party, but that his right wing faction made sure got selected at that.
Right, so that was Keir Starmer talking about his high quality candidates amidst left wing claims they had been purged, that they had been deselected intentionally and of course that was all while he was defending trying desperately to keep Diane Abbott out of the party, whilst also praising her, a fight the optics of which had become so sour, he eventually relented and readmitted Abbott back to the party, to stand once more as the MP for Hackney. I’d forgotten until I rewatched that, that former Welsh First Minister and again, the Starmer choice Vaughan Gething was in the background of that clip, a guy who took such a large and such a dodgy donation from a fly tipper that it scandalised him out of the door eventually, despite clinging on for as long as he could by his fingernails. Another fine example of a Keir Starmer high quality candidate.
But now of course we’re back to Jas Athwal, the new MP for Ilford South, the biggest landlord in parliament with 18 properties to his name, all but 3 of them being residential.
All 15 properties of those residential properties Athwal is a landlord of are flats in his home patch of Redbridge, where, until he was elected MP for Ilford South he was the leader of Redbridge Council and had been since 2014. He’s stepped down from that role now, but remains a councillor nonetheless, a representative of the town, I’m sure in light of this story the people of Redbridge will be absolutely dead chuffed to hear that.
Of course as is so often the case with stories concerning Keir Starmer or his loyal band of Starmerroids, the curse of social media comes along to bite them on the posterior, because the receipts are always held there and a tweet Athwal made in 2018 regarding poor rental accommodation is very much doing the rounds right now and quite understandably so:
‘Today a rogue landlord was fined £7,500 for severe overcrowding in their HMO property and failing to comply with our licencing conditions.
We will not tolerate substandard housing conditions for our residents.
Redbridge Council have just expanded our landlord licensing scheme so it now covers almost our entire borough. This new scheme will enforce standards in rented properties and help us crackdown on rogue landlords like the one mentioned above.’
We will not tolerate substandard housing conditions for our residents he said. Words to be hammered into the epitaph of Athwal’s parliamentary career, or ought to be if there was any likelihood of something being done about him, but I’ll come back to that point in a moment, we’d better establish not just what Athwal has done here, but the scale of it and the implications for Starmer here too and his claims of so called high quality candidates.
First there is Redbridge Council’s expanded landlord licensing scheme. Guess who has the temerity to brag about that expansion, yet who’s properties turn out to not meet that same licensing standard? Yep, Jas Athwal. The then council leader of 10 years, who oversaw this expansion owns rental properties that don’t actually meet that standard themselves.
The flats themselves are in an awful condition, with black mould on ceilings and ant infestations in several properties as shown here. This is disgusting, it is unsanitary, black mould is toxic, it is endangering the wellbeing of his tenants. The ants are everywhere one tenant claimed, on my kids clothes and on their bodies. But worse than the conditions was the fear that raising the issues would result in evictions as this piece from the BBC online coverage explains:
‘When I visited the properties, which are above an empty shop in Ilford, the communal areas were dirty and the lights did not work.
Fire alarms were hanging loose from the ceiling, and a washing machine had been dumped next to a set of stairs.
One resident showed me black mould growing on their bathroom ceiling, adding that a family member is a "clean freak" who keeps scrubbing the area with bleach to keep the mould at bay.
Another said they had googled black mould and realised it could be toxic.
"The whole ceiling would be black if we didn’t clean it every few weeks," they said.
I knocked on every door and spoke to most of the tenants. None wanted their name to be used. Some specifically said this was due to a fear of being evicted.
"Please don’t use my name," said a resident. "Finding a new flat is very difficult."
Most of the people I spoke to said Mr Athwal and his property manager were slow to respond to complaints or were completely unresponsive.
While I was at the block, the property manager was tipped off about my visit and tenants started to get calls from him. After receiving these calls they became hesitant about talking to me. This appeared to me to be intimidation.’
So we have unsanitary, flats, that aren’t up to local regs and where the tenants fear speaking out in case they lose their homes and even when they do can’t guarantee a response. Is this not the dictionary definition of a rogue landlord? Of a slumlord? This is a guy who has called himself a renters champion and this is a guy who Keir Starmer claims is one of those carefully vetted, thoroughly interviewed high quality candidates of his who just so happen to all come from his Labour right faction and the fact left wingers don’t get selected is purely coincidental and in no way have they been discriminated against whatsoever.
It makes a complete mockery of Labour’s pledge to renters, promising them that if elected standards would be improved, renters would no longer be able to be exploited or discriminated against when candidates like Athwal were selected to stand as MPs, a landlord presiding over flats that can only really be described as health hazards and in his case it goes so much further than just being selected, because the Labour right fought tooth and claw to make sure he was selected.
The incumbent Labour MP for Ilford South was left winger Sam Tarry, a trade unionist who had come into the party from the TSSA and previously defeated Athwal to be selected as Labour’s candidate under Jeremy Corbyn, but lost the selection when he, like so many other left wing Labour MPs, lost a trigger ballot process, itself tainted with vote rigging and outright fraud, which meant they would have to stand for full reselection. The trigger ballot process, conducted under the widely considered to be flawed Anonyvoter online voting system resulting in a flawed and unfair result, but which, despite complaints to the General Secretary of the Labour Party David Evans, was dismissed as irrelevant. Tarry then lawyered up over it, but sadly in the end to no avail. Jas Athwal replaced him as the Labour candidate, a close mate of the Ilford North MP Wes Streeting, but fundamentally Athwal shouldn’t even have got as far as he did.
Athwal had been suspended from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in light of serious allegations of sexual harassment, but thanks to Keir Starmer’s right wing dominated NEC, he was very quickly reinstated, so he was able to contest this seat. He was suspended for a total of something like 5 months, the accusations made against him, the exact nature of which have never been made clear, though an independent barrister brought in as a legal adviser decided that Athwal should face further disciplinary process. Instead, his case was seemingly dismissed with great haste and the Labour right never wavered in supporting him despite all those claims. We still ought to have an answer over that, the people of Ilford South, deserve to know what their MP did as well as expect him to be held accountable over his slum landlordism. Contrast Athwal’s with Diane Abbott as mentioned in that piece of video, who for a wrong copy of a news article response, was suspended for well over a year. Starmer got his way, Athwal is an MP. Athwal in light of his exposure as a slumlord should have been suspended pending an investigation by now over that, renters in this country who voted Labour want reassurance, or do they not count for another 5 years now because Starmer had their vote? Contrast that with a minimum 6 month suspension for 7 Labour MPs who dared to vote against keeping kids in poverty. Athwal was suspended for less time under Corbyn and not at all thusfar under Starmer, than those 7 have already been told they will be suspended for and they will only have their conduct reviewed at that point, the won’t be automatically reinstated. One rule for the left, another for Starmer’s allies on the right.
Athwal in light of the housing scandal has said he’s sorry, has said it will be put right, but all of that smacks of, sure, you say that now, because you got caught. Black mould doesn’t just appear overnight, ant infestations in multiple flats the same and that says nothing of the culture of fear amongst his tenants, that if they say anything, they’ll be evicted. Labour cannot say they are improving the rights of tenants, when there are literally landlord MPs in who’s interest it will be to vote against such moves, nor can they say they are on the side of tenants, if nothing is done about Athwal’s conduct. The message right now is you can’t be a Labour MP if you vote against keeping kids in poverty, but you can if you are a slum landlord. Athwal if he had any grace would resign over this. Starmer should have suspended him already, if he doesn’t that sends a message loud and clear that his Labour is on the side of rogue landlords and not victimised tenants and it’ll be just one more reason to remind us that Keir Starmer is not on our side. How can he be when he has private landlords on his ranks able to lobby Starmer’s government on housing? I wonder why Starmer has gone after social hosuing tenants to pay for new housing for example, for the life of me I can’t see a connection here. So which is it Keith, are you going to stand by your man as a slum landlord like you did over those assault allegations? Are you going to stand by him as a high quality candidate? What does that say about all your MPs in which case if this is the standard?
For more on Labour’s housing crisis, particularly their assault on social housing tenants, I can’t imagine who private landlords like Athwal would vote in their interests either, check out this video recommendation here as your next watch, housing is growing into a bigger and bigger crisis for Starmer’s Labour and all of their own making and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.