Rachel Reeves may have lost the plot. The Guardian reports that the Chancellor is considering a one-year rent freeze on private-sector flats and houses in England, as fears mount in government about the economic effects of the Iran war. Meanwhile, Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and the Green party, flanking Reeves and Keir Starmer from the left, risk pushing the Chancellor towards economic madness.

The one-year freeze – which would exempt new-builds – is being debated in the Treasury among other options to control housing costs. But according to the Guardian, it is Reeves’s preferred option.

My view of Reeves has always been that she is not economically illiterate, but politically weak. She understands how this works. A decade ago, she was right to argue Labour should not be the party of welfare dependency. She opposed lifting the two-child cap. At the start of this parliament, she backed modest cuts to disability spending, recognising the trajectory was unsustainable. She grasped the importance of rebuilding fiscal headroom. And on housing she stopped rent controls making their way into the Renters’ Rights Act.

But time and again, politics has got in the way: backbenchers blocking welfare reform, and the Treasury pushing through farm taxes and NI hikes because she lacked the political will or nous to consider and push back against the unintended consequences.

That has to be what has happened here (or I was wrong about Reeves to begin with) because she knows, she must know, that rent controls just don’t work.

Instead, the result will be entirely predictable: a collapse in rental supply as landlords sell up and flee the market; staggering rent hikes when the freeze comes to an end; and trapped tenants because new lease prices will shoot up as landlords attempt to recoup losses from elsewhere.

Worse still, the policy –........

© The Spectator