It’s not just complicit, it’s the plan. It goes like this.
Ordinary people pay taxes.
Taxes are given to lower income workers via benefits
Big corps pocket benefits via housing benefit, poor worker wages (same productivity, but crappy wages topped up by UC=tax payer paying wages) and profit on things people buy.
People with their fingers in the pie relax on their piles of loot. It’s practically Tory policy, they just don’t put it in the manifesto. They are positively cal of over the interest rates driving profits down. They’ll be able to pick up millions of bargains and then when there’s only a few corporate in any one area, THEN you’ll find out what the benefits of lots of small landlords are. Local monopoly on land owning by a few rich people hadn’t gone so well for the peasants historically. They’ll wring you dry.
You know who won’t have to bring properties up to an EPC of D? Social housing landlords and HMO landlords. There was talk of landlords with more than 8 properties, but I think it was dropped. So while you’re all getting your claws into small landlords, maybe thing about what utter bastards the big ones are. Because they are scapegoating (divide and rule being a triaging out of the wealthy upper classes playbook) small landlord, who are selling up in droves. I say again, you want to live in my house - I’m a widow using btl to replace my late husbands income to work flexible around my child - or would you like to line, say, Jacob Reece-Mogg’s reptilian pockets a bit more?