Ministers are right to acknowledge that our asylum system is not working as it should. They say that they understand the concerns of the people of Piddington, the Oxfordshire village that held a referendum to declare independence as a protest against the housing of asylum seekers in a former garrison nearby.
But Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said that, while the government is “listening” to the villagers, ministers are “not going to change our plans”. She said it was unfair that asylum seekers have mainly been housed in poor areas until now, and that “we are all going to have to do our bit”.
This is true, but possibly tactless. The government ought to ensure that the burdens of housing asylum seekers are shared fairly across the country, but it would make more sense to focus relentlessly on tackling the problem at source. If there were fewer unjustified claims for refugee status, the problem of fair burden-sharing would be minimised.
Thus the answer to the people of Piddington, as it should be to other, more sinister protesters, should not be “tough luck” but a redoubling of the government’s efforts to stop the boats, to do more to prevent the abuse of the visa system as a route to asylum claims, and to process existing claims more efficiently. This last part must include a greater effort to remove failed asylum claimants.
These are all difficult objectives to deliver. And, to be fair, the Labour government has made progress on all of them. The number of people arriving by small boat is down – largely, it must be said, because the numbers are down across Europe. The visa rules are being tightened, the number of asylum applications being processed is up, and more failed asylum seekers are being removed – even if most of them are leaving voluntarily.
The government should make more of its success, while accepting that much more still needs to be done. But it also needs to take a more aggressive approach to getting its message across. The problem of misinformation on social media is fanning the flames of legitimate concerns about immigration.
Writing in The Independent today, Guy Walters reports on how people with no history of political activism are drawn into anti-immigrant movements such as Patriot Platform, led by Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo. Walters writes: “Algorithms did not invent anger about the asylum system or force the Home Office to impose a camp without adequate consultation. But they identify people already primed to be frightened or furious, feed them increasingly extreme versions of what they believe and connect them overnight to men in Portsmouth or Dover.”
The answer is not to follow Shami Chakrabarti, the former director of Liberty, who wants to ban Patriot Platform. The peer and civil liberties campaigner made this illiberal suggestion in her Lord Speaker’s Lecture on Wednesday.
Baroness Chakrabarti is right to say that banning Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was “a disproportionate and counterproductive mistake”, but she then makes an opposite disproportionate and counterproductive mistake in suggesting that Patriot Platform should be banned instead.
Mr Thomas’s outfit is abhorrent, and if it uses violence or intimidation, it should be met with the full force of the law. The police are right to require that demonstrators remove face coverings at protests. But it is no more a terrorist organisation than is Palestine Action, and proscribing it would merely make martyrs of its supporters and overload the criminal justice system still further.
The answer in both cases is not to ban labels. It is to deal with the causes, the legitimate concerns on which extremists feed. And at the same time to crack down on the social media companies that provide platforms for racism and misinformation. Elon Musk’s X is the worst offender. Ms Nandy complained that a company representative failed to attend her meeting about tackling online abuse. Instead of merely accusing the company of “contempt”, however, she should take action to ensure that it lives up to its responsibilities.
So far, Andy Burnham has done well on empathy. He has not made Sir Keir Starmer’s mistake of implying that anyone with concerns about immigration is a “far-right thug”. But the new prime minister cannot deal with the threat posed by groups such as Patriot Platform by vibes alone. He must take decisive action to reform the asylum system further and to bring order to the Wild West of social media.
