So it’s goodbye to the unloved Bibby Stockholm barge, which has been referred to by its critics as a “floating prison” and has accommodated hundreds of asylum seekers in Portland, Dorset since last summer.
The gigantic structure, which has about 220 cabins, is unlikely to be missed by anyone – apart from perhaps a handful of former cabinet ministers who believed that the punishment message played well with voters, or countered the narrative pedalled by the far right that asylum seekers were accommodated in luxury hotels while homeless military veterans were forced to sleep in the street.
