Hi All
In case anyone is interested, here is a petition to reinstate the tax relief allowing mortgage interest to be set against rental income, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/627785
A petition only forces parliament to have a debate on the matter. It does not force legal change nor does it oblige the government to do so.
The UK context is not dissimilar here (except that tenants have close to zero rights compared to here) so I could hardly see HM's loyal opposition taking up the part of the landlord in these cases.
The UK has a much higher preponderance of BTL investors on high LTVs and Interest Only loans. As of 10 years ago around 1/5 of owner occupiers had IO terms also. So their circumstances are likely to be every bit as bad if not worse, even without much regulation.
From what I recall all tenancies since early 1997 are "assured shorthold tenancies" lasting 6 months and its the landlords discretion if he/she wishes to allow the tenant another tenancy.
Politically, its the same problem as here - there's been a very significant growth in the PRS and the Tories are fully aware they don't want to gift this cohort straight over to the Labour party. After the Corbyn debacle they probably feel that property owners are hardly going to jump ship to Labour regardless of what the Tories do to them.