Andy Burnham wants ‘all parts of the country…to play their part’. Not because we’re at war, or another pandemic is sweeping across the world. No. What the Prime Minister wants is for every town and village in the land to house ‘refugees and asylum seekers’– he believes it wouldn’t be fair if we ‘have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers’.
Burnham clearly dimly discerns that people don’t like having asylum seekers living near them but he also seems to view their presence in the country as unavoidable
Burnham’s remarks came in response to a question about the village of Piddington, where locals are opposing the government’s plans to house 1,250 ‘single adult male’ asylum seekers on a nearby former military base. Burnham insisted that ‘we understand people’s concerns’, but also admitted that ‘I don’t know the issue yet in detail but in some ways I understand it’s about creating secure space’. Yet again, it’s abundantly clear how unprepared Burnham is for the office he holds. The illegal migration crisis, and the asylum seeker crime wave, have been in the headlines for years. Did he not notice this when he was Manchester’s mayor? Did he not think about how he might respond to public anger? It seems not.
And it’s clear he still doesn’t get it. When Burnham won the Makerfield by-election he said he would end ‘HMO Britain’. Now he’s talking about ‘creating secure space’. Meanwhile the government often points out that it is closing asylum hotels – which is true, with the result that there are 7,000 more migrants living in houses and flats than there were when Labour came to power.
What neither the PM nor the government he leads seem to understand is that the problem isn’t the boats, the hotels or the HMOs. The actual problem is the presence in the country of hundreds of thousands of strange men, whose backgrounds, identities or even ages can often not be verified because they throw their documents away. Most of these men will never be fiscal contributors, and many commit appalling crimes.
Burnham clearly dimly discerns that people don’t like having asylum seekers living near them – why else would he not only want them housed in ‘the poorest communities’ – but he also seems to view their presence in the country as unavoidable. Perhaps asylum seekers are like a form of extreme weather that we just have to cope with, while the PM calls on us all to play our part.
The difference of course, was ably described by Chris Snowdon who wrote that ‘the mass importation of rapey migrants from the world’s worst countries is not some national undertaking that we have agreed to. It is an outrage that has been done to us despite our explicit opposition.’
There is something particularly grim and bleak in politicians trying to summon up Blitz, or at least Covid, spirit for a policy which is entirely a matter of choice, which causes great and repeated harm to British people, especially women and children, and which is so utterly unpopular.
I spoke with Nigel Farage this morning, who said ‘rather than have the courage to deal with this dangerous situation Burnham would rather endanger every community in the country. This is not leadership – it is cowardice’.
This cowardice, or lack of seriousness is everywhere in government policy. But instead of being brave enough to name the problems in front of us and confront them, Burnham’s government is focusing on the most superficial symptoms.
The government seems to believe that putting thousands of illegal migrants on ‘former army bases’ will somehow be better than housing them in hotels or HMOs. Never mind that these men aren’t being detained, and can wander at will into nearby towns and villages, Burnham wants every part of the country to play its part.
The only silver lining to all of this is that these policies will be disastrous for Labour. Bringing vast numbers of asylum seekers to parts of rural England which have previously been untouched by mass migration is going to prove deeply unpopular (and indeed, even the local Lib Dems in Piddington are opposing asylum seekers being housed there). It will also be more expensive – asylum seekers are generally housed in poorer areas because it’s cheaper. So Burnham’s inability to confront the real problem will hurt him, and benefit Reform, as asylum seeker crime is spread across ‘all parts of the country’.
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