On Home Ground

So concerned are our lords and masters with reforming the more feudal aspects of the housing system that the rather feudally-named Commonhold Council has failed to meet in the past thirteen months: a schedule which corresponds to at least one Government flunkey's quasi-mediaeval idea of regularity. The council was set up two years ago in the wake of a Johnsonian pledge by the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove to abolish the leasehold system: a pledge on which the party of slums and landlords has now, mirabile dictu, decided to renege. The British leasehold system is almost unique in the world, being employed only in England, Wales and some few remaining civilised parts of Australia and the USA; and aside from this heritage value, leasehold is dear to Conservative hearts because it tends to cost young people a great deal of money. Even so, the hired anonymoids of the jabbering homunculus have assured their friends in the media that something more or less resembling reform of certain aspects of the system could well be enunciated later in the year. Team Starmer has accused the Government of abandoning its prior commitments; which is certainly something Team Starmer would know about.