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I imagine the end point would be something along the lines of what happened when slavery was outlawed in the UK, with the slavers being handsomely rewarded for the expropriation of their 'property'.
If you are comparing ground rents to slavery you can, politely, fuck off. I also think linking ground rents to Grenfell (which was of course council-owned) is a bad faith argument.
NickCJ-
Don't get me wrong, you can go fuck yourself too, but we were talking about whether it was possible for a government to ban leasehold or if it would be a legal quagmire they'd never get out of. The slavery abolition act is clearly comparable in the sense of a governments obligations to those who benefit from a system which was legal prior to its outlawing - its literally just a question of how much they'd compensate the freeholders for.
And I'm not linking Grenfell with ground rents, but with the whole Leasehold system, and how it disconnects those who buy a building from those who live in it - whether the freeholder is the duke of westminster, a private third party, an offshore organisation, or a council, that disconnect persists. And the power imbalance in leasehold is summarised by ground rents, which are broadly (with some significant exceptions) benign but by the fact that we have one group of people who make all the decisions and have all the money but pay none of the costs, and another which pays all the bills but has very limited recourse to how that money is spent unless they fancy going to court.
I've spent the last four or five years in court against my freeholder. He is a millionaire with a legal team on retainer. We are first time buyers living in an ex council block in east London. More than one of my neighbours has gone long term sick with the stress, one has died. Leasehold is far from benign.
ReekBlefs
I think they're more worried about the private estates tbh - the Duke of Westminster owns most of Mayfair and Belgravia, not to mention his rural holdings, and his lawyers have stated their intention to utilise human rights law to resist any such expropriation. I imagine the end point would be something along the lines of what happened when slavery was outlawed in the UK, with the slavers being handsomely rewarded for the expropriation of their 'property'.
You're right it'd be a legal quagmire. But it's also the right thing to do. The outcome of our current system of leasehold, which is more or less unique in the world, is Grenfell. It's the cladding crisis. People's homes need to be homes first, not a revenue stream for third party freeholders. Imo.