To an extent, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. While I don’t think politicians should be making policy that is blatantly to their own advantage without some other justification, I also don’t think they should be mysteriously forbidden from doing reasonable and legal things that other people in a similar situation to their own except for not being politicians could do.
Put another way, my objection in this case is not to those who have successfully invested in property ownership, whether politicians or not; it is to the fact that doing so was a viable option in the first place, because the housing market has been systematically manipulated over many years now to artificially inflate the value of properties. This gives a false sense of security to a lot of people, and for the same reason, it makes it politically difficult to implement policy that will restore some sense of proportionality to house prices, such as significantly loosening planning rules so we can simply build more homes.
That is what needs to change, IMHO. The value of a property can be whatever the market wants it to be, given what the land it’s on is worth and what it costs to build and connect up and so on, but we shouldn’t be forever inflating the market by artificially making property a scarce resource.
"Successfully investing in property ownership in the UK" also means excluding younger generations the chance to own their property (especially if you are in a position to influence the supply side via planning laws), so I am less keen to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Put another way, my objection in this case is not to those who have successfully invested in property ownership, whether politicians or not; it is to the fact that doing so was a viable option in the first place, because the housing market has been systematically manipulated over many years now to artificially inflate the value of properties. This gives a false sense of security to a lot of people, and for the same reason, it makes it politically difficult to implement policy that will restore some sense of proportionality to house prices, such as significantly loosening planning rules so we can simply build more homes.
That is what needs to change, IMHO. The value of a property can be whatever the market wants it to be, given what the land it’s on is worth and what it costs to build and connect up and so on, but we shouldn’t be forever inflating the market by artificially making property a scarce resource.