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whether it was possible for a government to ban leasehold or if it would be a legal quagmire they'd never get out of
Parliament is sovereign - They can legislate any quagmires away*. If they so choose to**.
* notwithstanding higher authority made de facto through international agreement. As if that's ever stopped us.
** fucking lol
NotThamesWater
ReekBlefs
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.