'Send them back!': The hard-right have no answers for migrant hotels
Epping Council has won a High Court ruling to end migrants being housed in a local hotel, and many other councils hope to do the same. Reform UK wants the UK to send people back to where they came from – but that will never work. Here’s why.
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In brief…
- The Bell Hotel, where anti-migrant protesters have gathered through the summer in Epping, will close its doors to people seeking asylum after a High Court ruling over its planning permits.
- This, The News Agents say, opens a can of worms for the government, namely working out where the 30,000 people in migrant hotels across the UK go if there are mass shut-downs across the country.
- The UK cannot pack people off to their country of origin due to its legal commitments to the UN, and the 1951 refugee treaty – so calls from Nigel Farage and Richard Tice are nothing but “glib phrases”.
What’s the story?
Anti-migrant protesters are celebrating, with The Bell Hotel in Epping set to close its doors to asylum seekers after becoming a battleground over the summer on the issue.
The leafy London suburb has played host to concerned locals, far-right agitators who have been bussed in to swell their numbers, and large groups of counter-protesters who have descended to support the rights of people in the hotel to remain there.
Now, a High Court ruling has ordered The Bell to stop housing migrants on a planning technicality. It did not receive the proper permission to switch its use from short-term stays to people living there for more than 30-day stretches, despite having run as such without incident for more than five years.
Other councils across the country are now also hoping to challenge their local hotels being used to house asylum seekers, including all 12 run by Reform UK.
Reform’s line on migrants in the UK is simple: Send them back, Farage and his team says.
But that’s not going to happen.
So the big question now is, where are these people going to go if the UK stops using hotels to house them?
Why won’t ‘send them back’ work?
Shut the hotels, ship people back to where they came from, keep Britain British, get the St. George Cross flying on every flagpole. Simple, right?
Well, no actually.
“If you listen to people like Nigel Farage or Richard Tice, they'll just say 'send them back', which is completely reductive,” says Lewis Goodall.
The UK signed the UN’s refugee treaty in 1951, and since then has had a legal duty and obligation to process migrants who enter the country and support those who are genuine asylum seekers.
“Even if they haven't got a case for asylum, what do we do if they're from Yemen, Afghanistan, or South Sudan?” Lewis asks.
“We don't have return agreements with those countries. So what are we supposed to do?”
“Where are these people going to go?”
Why is the ‘send them back’ message so empty?
Jon Sopel describes Reform’s ‘send them back’ slogan as just another “glib phrase” that looks good on podiums, but is entirely undeliverable.
But that, he says, is just another example of how broken UK politics really is.
“People are so pissed off with the conventional, mainstream Labour politician who says they're going to smash the gangs, or the Conservative politician who says they're going to stop the boats, and neither are able to achieve either,” Jon says.
“This is fertile territory for these groups that I also don't believe have got any easy answers.
“This is a serious problem, and for years and years, politicians of all stripes have lied about the scale of the problem.”
Where do the people in hotels go?
OK so if ‘send them back’ isn’t an option, where do people go if every UK council finds a loophole to get its migrant hotels shut down?
Not far, it seems.
“You still have to put them somewhere while they're being processed,” Lewis says.
“So now, if asylum hotels aren't the answer, the only other answers are social housing, of which there is precious little supply, there are houses of multiple occupation – bedsits basically – where they just shove people in, or the private rented sector.
“So they'll be in the community, and people don't want that either. So what do you do?”
“As soon as some of these groups get wind that some of these people are in those, they'll attack those as well.”