Protests put the UK’s political class on notice: A restive public doesn’t want any more illegal immigration

Photo: AP Images

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pping, a middle-class district in southern England, rarely makes the news. But when a judge there ruled that a local hotel housing asylum-seekers can no longer be used for that purpose, it set off a bomb under one of the UK’s most politically toxic immigration policies.

Anti-immigrant protests, inspired by this ruling,  erupted across the country. A panicking Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who makes much of his respect for the law, has promised to curb the powers of judges in asylum cases. But the political class has been put on notice — a restive populace will not put up with unfettered illegal immigration much longer.

“Keir Starmer knows that amongst the great British public, this issue rates even higher than the health service — and he’s just basically playing catch-up,” said Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK and longtime immigration hawk.

How We Got Here

Under the UN refugee convention, when the UK takes in asylum-seekers who cannot support themselves, it has an obligation to house them while their claims are being heard. But the number of such claims has risen exponentially in recent years, lengthening the interim period and driving up demand for the hotels.

Hotels were first widely used for migrants during the pandemic. Since 2020, the proportion of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has risen from 5% to 30%. Until recently, they were disproportionately in deprived areas, where accommodation is cheaper. This has turned those communities into cauldrons of resentment and tension.

“It creates that sense that the state is almost punching a bruise,” says Labour MP Josh Simons, a Starmer loyalist.

In Numbers

111,084 — the number of asylum claims in the last year alone

50,000 — the number of illegal Channel crossings since Labour took power

32,345 — the number of asylum seekers currently housed in hotels

£2.1 billion — the cost of asylum hotels in the year to March 2025

£5.4 billion — the total cost of the asylum system in 2023–24

76% — the percentage of 2024 arrivals who were men over 18

50% — the proportion of asylum seekers from just 5 countries (Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Syria, and Sudan)

Of Legalities and Laughingstocks

The current immigration system makes a mockery of sovereignty and border control. Migrants can apply for asylum whether they arrive legally or not. (And 40% of applicants are on a visa — for work, study, or just a visit. Some 30% to 40% cross the Channel illegally in small boats via people smugglers.) Agreements with other countries en route have done nothing to stem the tide, and no government has been able to overturn the outdated human rights laws that hinder deportations and impose onerous obligations.

There have been incidents of asylum seekers retroactively posting contrived content against their repressive governments at home, which is then accepted as proof of political persecution. Asylum claims have also been granted to people from relatively benign (if poor) countries, on equally spurious grounds.

Labour Ineptitude

The Conservatives — on whose watch immigration soared, despite promises to reduce numbers to the tens of thousands — belatedly clamped down on some legal routes, and proposed a deportation scheme to Rwanda. It was widely ridiculed, most of all by Labour, who instead promised to “smash the [people smuggling] gangs.”

No gangs appear to have been smashed yet, and the removal of a Rwanda-style deterrent has kept the boats coming. Labour also vowed to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029, but the decision in Epping caught them off guard, exposing the fact that they have no alternative yet. They’ve also pursued the option of processing hubs in third countries (which they insist is not like Rwanda, but will also be a deterrent) but have yet to find a willing host country.

Rising Anger

There are fewer more effective recipes for local discontent than the mass accommodation of young Muslim men in disadvantaged areas with crumbling public services. The dysfunction touches, highlights, and puts further strain on every aspect of the creaking British state — the teetering NHS, an acute housing shortage, inadequate local infrastructure, absent policing, and a backlogged court system, against a backdrop of fracturing social cohesion. Increasingly squeezed taxpayers are demanding to know where their money is going, and why the state’s largesse is reserved for healthy young men from faraway lands.

Culture Clash

People are also increasingly uneasy about the creeping sectarianism imported by large Muslim communities, and worry that tens of thousands more Muslim immigrants will make it worse. The Gaza issue has further accentuated the divide: Palestinian flags have proliferated in many areas, and elections in some areas are fought on that issue, rather than on local concerns.

When England flags were hung in Muslim-dominated areas as a defensive gesture, the councils forcibly took them down, citing the risk of “offense.” It sparked an outraged backlash from non-Muslim residents, who pointed out that these same councils have been flying the Palestinian flags for months.

Ripe for Reform

The immigration explosion under the Conservatives, both legal and illegal, was nicknamed the“Boriswave.” Prime Minister Johnson’s liberal stance on the issue opened the borders to over 1 million people, shredding the Tory reputation for border control. Meanwhile, polling shows just 11% of voters trust Labour to deal with the problem.

With nowhere else to turn, angry voters have been driven to Reform. With many Labour seats vulnerable to Reform, the government is racing to show how responsive they are to voters’ concerns; they’ve recently promised to publish the data on criminals’ ethnicity, and Starmer made a controversial speech warning of the deleterious effects of immigration on social cohesion (he later walked the comments back, under pressure from his own MPs).

Procedural Plodding

Despite the worsening crisis, populist promises from Reform (deportation of all illegal migrants within 30 days), and Conservative proposals to tighten eligibility criteria and leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which is a consistent barrier to deportations, Labour is stubbornly sticking to their plan to “smash the gangs,” refusing to acknowledge that absent a deterrent, the migrants will keep coming. Some of their own MPs are frustrated with the government’s intransigence, and some Labour councils are considering legal action of the kind that has forced the closure of the hotel in Epping.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1076)