Tory u-turn: Last year the Government supported rent plans they’re now attacking

Today Tory foghorn Chairman Grant Shapps has been attacking Ed Miliband’s rent plans as “Venezuelan-style rent controls”. Which is fair enough, you might think. Apart from the fact that they aren’t, strictly-speaking, rent controls. And that they’re used in such Socialist utopias as New York, Berlin and Dubai.

However, what’s especially daft about the Shapps attack is that the Tories were themselves proposing a very similar policy just last year. Well know “Chavista” Eric Pickles announced plans to introduce “Better tenancies for families in rental homes”. The government press release promised:

“Tenants will be able to request longer tenancies that provide stability for their family, avoid hidden fees when renting a home and demand a fair deal from their landlords and letting agents”

But what about stopping inflation-busting rent rises? That’s what the Tories are angry about surely? No – that was in the Pickles press release too. It pledged:

“rent review clauses, which are index linked to inflation, will provide both landlords and tenants with greater financial certainty to plan over a longer period”.

What a dangerous pair of Socialists Shapps and Pickles are.