Landlords are right about Corbyn's crazy proposals to control rent – they do work really hard to own their properties, after all

Among all the destructive policies announced by Labour at their conference was the dreadful idea that there ought to be some control on rent charges, provoking statements from landlords such as: “If we’re only allowed to charge 60 per cent of the average wage for one room with modern extras such as creative damp, radishes growing out of the light fittings and an infestation of haddock behind the settee, it’s not worth the hassle of collecting the money, which means the landlord will have no choice but to convert the property into a ski slope as this will be more profitable.”

The policy director of the Landlords’ Association, David Smith said: “Rent controls would be a disaster for tenants. History has proved that they stifle investment and reduce supply.”

And history does prove this, because humans never bother to provide shelter for anyone, unless they’re going to make a huge profit out of it. Cavemen didn’t exist for the first million years of human existence.

People would look at the cave and not bother to move inside, as no one was charging them rent for it, so they’d stay outside and get eaten by packs of wolves, until one kind person decided they’d take no part hunting or gathering, and instead would charge everyone £300 a week for living in a corner of the cave that was especially dark, and never give anyone their deposit back because they’d done paintings over the walls.

So it’s a fair point that landlords are opposing the rent controls because they’ll be a “disaster for tenants”. This is an act of some generosity, for landlords to campaign like this on behalf of their tenants, pleading with Labour, “Please, please don’t force us to charge them less rent. We can’t bear the thought of them having £8 spare to enjoy a curry and a pint at Wetherspoons; it would take away our incentive to let them stay and we’d feel compelled to convert their flat into a pop-up pawnbrokers, which would break our hearts.”

It’s especially kind of them when you consider how hard a landlord has to work at owning property. They never get a moment off, and even have to carry on owning it when they’re sick – it’s just own, own, own, with barely a moment of gratitude.

We rely on these selfless landlords for habitation, so to help solve the housing shortage, you should give your landlord more than he charges. If you’ve got a few hours free that you were going to use for leisure activities such as sleeping, give out pizza leaflets and donate the money you earn to the landlord, as this will give him extra incentive to own property, so he’ll be in a better position to help the tenants he feels sorry for.

The argument about incentives is that if you stop landlords making as much money as possible with no regulations, then “no new properties will be built”. This makes sense, because no houses were ever built in all of history until someone could own the house and rent it out.

In medieval Europe, peasants had to look after the noble’s chickens on a Sunday, and offer their daughter to the Duke’s son, and that’s why there was no shortage of fields. So if Labour really wanted to help tenants, they’d give landlords more incentive to own property by bringing back ninth century serfdom.

Then in the 1950s, when there were millions of council houses that people lived in and looked after and cherished, they were all miserable because they couldn’t bear the thought of not making a landlord as rich as they could.

The comfort was unbearable, so tenants would refuse to go to the indoor toilet and carry on doing it in the garden where toilets were in the old days, as a protest against the removal of a private landlord they had to give all their money to.

Because everything runs so much more efficiently when there are no controls, which is why the banking system operated so smoothly once all the regulations were taken away.

Housing charity Shelter says: “Britain has one of the least regulated rent sectors the world has ever seen”, and that must be why housing runs almost as smoothly as the banks did, with young people merrily able to look forward to enjoying settling into a new home as soon as their parents die as long as the old bastards don’t have it taken off them for selfishly getting dementia.

This is so much more efficient than a restrictive regulated system where the number of houses built is planned according to the number of people we think might need to live somewhere. No wonder property owners are so cross.

One property owner responded to Labour’s proposal by saying: “Some landlords are spitting about this” – so you can see why mildly reducing record-high rents as a portion of income is controversial. It’s the same with laws against child prostitution; some people prefer extra rules like that, but child traffickers spit against such meddling regulation.

So, as the system is working so well, we should arrange a similar method for every part of the economy. 90 per cent of the country’s socks should be bought by a few hundred people, who rent them out at £50 a week, then half the socks can be full of damp, millions of people under 30 have to share their parents’ socks, and if anyone suggests reducing the sock rent, the Sock Renting Association can scream: “THIS WILL RUIN our incentive to own socks. It’s the poor sods whose feet will be ruined that I feel sorry for.”