Deep disillusionment is nowdriving the public moodin Britain. People are desperate for competent government to handle issues like the cost of living, welfare and immigration. And they want people to be treated fairly and with dignity, whether they are asylum seekers, disabled people or pensioners. Yet on immigration, it is clear that No 10 has missed the memo.
It remains convinced that the only way to get a hearing with Reform voters on asylum is to sound as tough as possible. Indeed, Labour has recently resorted to sharing footage of people beingdeported in handcuffs, and headline grabbing initiatives to ship asylum seekers whose claims fail to so-called return hubs in countries such as Albania.
But this approach is simply wrong. It will not work. The only way to get a hearing with Reform voters on asylum is to deliver results.
An immigration white paper expected on Monday will signal a further hardening of policy towards those seeking asylum. Already trailed is aplanned crackdownon international students applying for asylum and higherEnglish-speaking requirementsfor migrants and refugees settling here.
What do all these policies have in common? They are kneejerk initiatives that will make no difference to whether or not people come to the UK seeking sanctuary. We know from our work at the Refugee Council that asylum seekers don’t make decisions based on the latest government announcement or new laws. They come because of family and community connections, as well as historic links with Britain and its mother tongue.
What’s more, these plans won’t make any material difference to the lives of people voting for Reform. For the average voter, they are meaningless. What concerns them are boats coming across the Channel and asylum hotels that they see in their local areas. They’ve heard the government’s promise to close the hotels, but they’ve seen no progress.
Delivering on this is where the government has a chance to rebuild trust. It must consider systemic solutions. The asylum housing challenge cannot be separated from the wider temporary housing challenge that has led to a number of councils teetering on the edge of the financial precipice. It needs rapid, whole-system reform.
A Treasury review of procuring short-term residential accommodation could potentially identify a financing solution so that councils could procure the housing that is needed – not just for refugees and people seeking asylum, but for families facing homelessness. This would be bold, impactful policymaking that voters would actually be able to see for themselves.
On the Channel boat crossings, too, the government could bring back trust by restoring a greater sense of order. “Smashing the gangs” involved in people-smuggling won’t work on its own. Instead, a multipronged approach is needed that includes cooperating more deeply with France and other European countries, as well as undermining the business model of the gangs by creating safe and legal options for refugees to apply for asylum in Britain. This combination of approaches – enforcement, cross-border cooperation and legal routes – worked in the US, as shown by the big decline in the number of irregular arrivals at theUS-Mexico borderin the final year of the Biden administration.
Sensible, evidence-based policies like these are not only necessary to restore trust with disillusioned voters: they reflect the views of the average voter. An analysis bythe opinion researcherSteve Akehurst shows“boring moderation is the order of the day” when it comes to immigration and asylum, as it doesn’t alienate either side of the voter coalition that was so vital to Labour’s general election victory.
Not only will tough-sounding policies, headlines and slogans erode public trust when they fail to produce results, they will also have the effect of dangerously ramping up the temperature on the asylum debate. Less than a year since towns up and down the country were shocked by violence on the streets targeting refugees, we need responsible and sensible leadership, not the populist playbook.
On Thursday, our political leaders marked VE Day. It was out of the horrors of the second world war that Britain built its asylum system, offering safety to people who had experienced the very worst suffering, regardless of how they reached our shores. Today,more than two-thirds of Britonsare proud of the country’s role in taking in refugees since that war. That includes a majority of Reform voters.
Britons have not lurched to the right on immigration. Britons are not anti-refugee. The public just wants to see a system that is fair, controlled and treats people with the dignity they deserve. Above all else, they are fed up with politicians overpromising and underdelivering. It’s time for some principled competence and far less populist performance.
Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council