Usual Labour bullshit vs usual Tory bullshit

From The Guardian:

Sadiq Khan will make a campaign for wide-ranging rent control the key plank of his 2020 re-election bid, asking the government to give the London mayoralty the power to combat soaring rents in the capital.

That is the most staggeringly meaningless promise ever, and one on which he cannot actually deliver. Even if he wins and asks the government to give him the statutory power to regulate rents, they will simply refuse.

This reminds me of his meaningless fares-freeze pledge, He simply had no authority to do so. Rrom The Guardian:

Tony Travers, local government expert and director of the LSE’s Greater London Group, said the announcement by Khan came down to an issue of trust and how the average person would interpret his pledge.

“The words he used at the time made it very hard to understand the commitment only applied effectively to pay-as-you-go and cash fares on TfL-only services,” he said. “It’s inevitably going to be interpreted as not quite what was [advertised] on the tin.”

Even if Khan had such powers, he's in the pocket of the land mafia, so wouldn't actually use them.

Moving on...

“London is in the middle of a desperate housing crisis that has been generations in the making,” Khan said. “I am doing everything in my power to tackle it – including building record numbers of new social homes – but I have long been frustrated by my lack of powers to help private renters.”

That is a straight lie. New construction is even lower under Sadiq than under Johnson, and in such pitiful amounts that it can't possibly have any impact on anything.

The Tories could have scored a few open goals, but decide to make themselves look stupid by playing the Missing Homes Conundrum instead:

The housing secretary, James Brokenshire, has argued that the controls would lead to poorer housing standards with landlords unable to afford to maintain properties and could also have a dramatic effect on housing supply, with landlords choosing to sell up rather than have their rental income reduced.

Jeez. Landlord sells, tenant buys, supply of rental housing and demand for rental housing goes down in step. Twenty years ago, the number of private rented homes was half what it is today; were rents higher or lower?