Beth Stratford

Economist (ecological macro, housing). Hon Fellow @IIPP_UC. Helped set up @LDNrentersunion✊. Co-author #LandForTheMany.
Posting more on the cloudless site! 😉

[Beth Stratford @beth_stratford]

Not sure if I can convey how satisfying it feels to see @ZackPolanski using my analysis to raise awareness of what a rapid and meaningful impact a rent freeze could have in England. Read the full report here: https://t.co/CHKhcJp7g1 Thank you Zack 🙏

[The Green Party @TheGreenParty]

Rent controls would save households up to £2,400 a year and the Government £2 billion a year. It's a no-brainer.

But only the Green Party has a policy to introduce them.

[London Renters Union @LDNRentersUnion]

Angela Rayner is wrong on rent controls which would save tenants money now, as well as saving government billions on housing benefit.

The Renters' Rights Act will not bring down rents for those of us struggling. We cannot end this crisis without rent control.

[New Economy Brief @NewEconomyBrief]

Also including:
- @Autonomy_Inst on caps on political donations
- @CLESthinkdo on ending trickle down economics with community wealth building
- @beth_stratford on rent controls
- @pollytoynbee on the @HighPayCentre

[Ben Smoke @bencsmoke]

following @AngelaRayner's friday announcement that the government will not be bringing in rent controls, i looked at the growing case for them (ft. @LDNRentersUnion, @ACORNunion, @beth_stratford, @ZackPolanski + more) + what burnham's inaction means about his govt (link below!)

[Alfie Stirling @alfie_stirling]

When pay runs out before the end of the week, it's irrelevant whether the next thing you need costs 50p or £50.

Before getting in an arithmetic tangle over 50p>0, pause instead on what you would do if one week you had to choose between feeding your kids or brushing their teeth.

[Beth Stratford @beth_stratford]

@Lord_Talbot64 @ZackPolanski The data doesn't support this position actually. Places with higher share of migrants actually have lower house prices. See Sá, F., 2015. https://t.co/0JvCVCjOuK and Zhu, J., Pryce, G., 2025. https://t.co/ZQBc48ITv1

[Beth Stratford @beth_stratford]

Not sure if I can convey how satisfying it feels to see @ZackPolanski using my analysis to raise awareness of what a rapid and meaningful impact a rent freeze could have in England. Read the full report here: https://t.co/CHKhcJp7g1 Thank you Zack 🙏

[The Green Party @TheGreenParty]

Rent controls would save households up to £2,400 a year and the Government £2 billion a year. It's a no-brainer.

But only the Green Party has a policy to introduce them.

[Beth Stratford @beth_stratford]

@worstall @ZackPolanski What? Of course I included the cost of a mortgage! And operational costs and maintenance. Check the detailed methodological appendix mate!

[Danny Sriskandarajah @dhnnjyn]

"Rent controls, an idea whose time has come" @ZackPolanski at launch of joint @NEF/ @IIPP_UCL report by @beth_stratford

Huge benefits for renters & government; negative impacts on landlords are marginal. Other countries have them, UK has had them before, so why not again?

[💙 Sophie Socket ♠️ @Socket1Sophie]

Even the American media is laughing at Farage 🤣🤣🤣

[Nick Dearden @nickdearden75]

New ISDS threatened against Britain over takeover of Jingye Steel. The Chinese corporation wants more than £1bn.

ISDS is a major threat to our sovereignty. Yet the government is still signing up to more of these corporate courts.

https://t.co/ttAjMM1lqt

[joe brindle @JoeBrindle_]

"There's no reason why a state like Britain ought to be subject to the blackmail of the bond markets if the central bank plays the role it could be playing"

@adam_tooze lays the blame of Britain's bond markets fears at the feet of BoE and Andrew Bailey

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

The @TheGreenParty @ZackPolanski should also ask how Peter Mandelson arranged for UK to join Trump's Pax Silica, a project explicitly pursuing US AI supremacy with lock-ins and dependencies that will be hard to unravel.

[Chris Doyle @Doylech]

Mandelson, the man who was besties with the pedo, child sex trafficker, Epstein, objecting to circulating video evidence of Israeli atrocities against Palestinian children. A theme

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

The Blue Labour in power shocked that a Labour government has redistribution at its core.

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

We need a new ‘total’ economic settlement - one that builds economic resilience:

A House of Lords committee has just warned that drought could threaten UK food production, with public water demand outstripping supply by 5 billion litres a day by 2055. Aging, privatised infrastructure, climate volatility, and new water-hungry industries like data centres are colliding at once.

This sits alongside the Joint Intelligence Committee’s own assessment – written by the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, initially blocked by Downing Street – warning that by 2030 the UK food system is at “strategic risk of catastrophic failure”.

These are not separate stories. Drought, food security, AI disruption, energy shocks, supply chain fragility: they are facets of the same condition. A country hollowed out by forty years of privatisation and short-termism, trying to face a century of compounding instability with the institutions of a previous age.

Defence can no longer mean tanks, submarines and the threat from Russia alone. Those threats are real. But the front line now also runs through reservoirs, data centres, food supply chains, the labour market, and the social contract itself.

A society fractured by inequality, dependent on collapsing ecosystems and brittle private monopolies, is not a secure one. Security has to be understood whole. What’s needed is a new total economic settlement: democratic control of essentials, public investment in productive capacity, and monetary and fiscal levers used to prepare – not just compensate after the fact. Water, food, energy, compute, skills: treated as the strategic infrastructure of national survival.

We are at the foothills of this. Our politics is still arguing about the last decade. The next one is already here.

[Joseph Elliott @J_Elliott94]

New from JRF: we need Rent Controls (and Tax Reform).

Landlords have been cashing in on rents and house price growth, making excessive returns, while tenants are paying exorbitant rents which drive economic insecurity, poverty and homelessness.

New policy and research from us⬇️

[Share The Wealth @sharewealthuk]

A tiny 2% annual wealth tax could raise over £5bn a year from the top 15 billionaires on the Sunday Times Rich List alone.

That could cut household energy bills by an average of £150 a year using @jrf_uk's Rising Block Tariff proposal.

So why isn't the government doing it now?

[Joseph Rowntree Foundation @jrf_uk]

🚨 NEW!

Our report out today concludes rent controls can ease the pressure on renters, without jeopardising the private rented sector. A rent control could:

- Make renters nearly £1200 a year better off by 2030
- Reduce the housing benefit bill by £600m

Here's how 👇

[Renters' Reform Coalition @RentersReformCo]

More important research on rent controls, this from @NEF calling for an 'emergency brake' on rents.

Their research finds that low-income renters spend nearly half their incomes on rent. We cannot tackle the cost-of-living crisis without addressing this.
https://t.co/b7lREHl5eC

[Beth Stratford @beth_stratford]

Majority of landlords are earning supernormal returns: even with current high interest rates 63% outperform a standard 60:40 equity-gilt portfolio & 71% outperform broader real estate sector – according to research I did w/ @Autonomy_Inst, mentioned in @Victoria_Spratt's piece!👇

[Vicky Spratt @Victoria_Spratt]

Could rent control save renters £1,200 a year? And shave £600m off the annual Housing Benefit bill?

New research shared exclusively with me from @jrf_uk and @Autonomy_Inst seems to think so, and suggests mitigations to protect landlords with mortgages.

This week’s newsletter @theipaper

https://t.co/fFLE4nKSSe