IN THE middle of the nauseating platitudes, bunting, and military costumes of last weekend’s royal pantomime, a spate of reports came out about the landlord King and the crown as being one of the largest rentiers in Britain.

These revealed that the king himself directly rents out hundreds of homes on top of farmland and commercial properties. While institutionally the monarchy is a total anachronism, the aristocratic class are at the forefront of the rentier’s delight that is present-day Britain.

This prompted many questions around ownership. Who owns land and assets gets to choose how they’re used, and the ramifications of that ownership are far-reaching. Where homes are built, how green spaces are managed, how food is grown, what spaces are set aside and for what purposes, are all massively affected by who owns what.