The book covers what is necessary economically to run to be an MP.
> Running for MP can bankrupt you if you haven't got a passive source of income.
MPs become landlords for the passive income that is necessary given that running to be an MP can leave you destitute.
Landlords aren't (usually) becoming MPs in order to vote for more favourable conditions for landlords. Indeed, there have been many policies detrimental to landlords e.g. removal of mortgage interest income tax relief.
Landlords don't need to become MPs in order for MPs to become landlords or for their interests to emerge as it would with any other contingent with shared interests making up 18% of sitting MPs.
> Indeed, there have been many policies detrimental to landlords e.g. removal of mortgage interest income tax relief.
For all we know there would have been more legislation of this kind if they hadn't been there.
Aside from that, why is it that, since the majority of MPs are aligned with major parties and major parties pay for prospective MPs to run, and since MPs are remunerated well above average and have lavish expenses compared to the rest of us, that they would become bankrupt?
On top of that, they can earn big money if they get into cabinet[1], and they don't even lose that much when they leave[2]:
> For MPs defeated at the 2019 election, the average loss-of-office payment was £5,250 – equivalent to just under one month of their £84,000 salary.
The average UK salary for that year (2019):
> The Office of National Statistics has released its provisional update of the UK Average Salary 2019, showing that the average full-time salary is £36,611 and average part-time salary is £12,495.
I'm left thinking "why?"