The Labour party will, one suspects, curse the name of Epping for some time. The uncomfortable fact is that it stood to lose big-time whatever the result of today’s hearing in the High Court.
Following the refusal by Mr Justice Mould to order the owner of the Bell Hotel to cease using it as a migrant hostel, social media is awash with condemnation. As a result of its having made common cause with the hotel owner’s claim to carry on using the premises, Labour is being now being pilloried as soft on illegal immigration and unsound on the rule of law. At the same time, by making clear its opposition to the court order sought by Epping Forest Council it has cemented its reputation as the party of self-satisfied metropolitan snobs which holds in contempt the views of elected local authorities and the concerns of local people.
Even had the decision gone the other way, however, things would not have been much better for Keir Starmer. Having for some weeks talked a lot but done very little about closing migrant hotels and solving the asylum problem, he would have been faced with a need for genuine action but not many ideas of what to do. Within weeks the government would have had to close not only the Bell but (since other local authorities had also started litigation) innumerable hotels up and down the kingdom, with nowhere immediately obvious to put thousands of irregular immigrants. It might even have had to inflame feelings further, and enrage not only local voters but also the left-wing awkward squad among its own backbenchers, by introducing emergency legislation to allow the present situation to continue.
The judge’s decision itself was perhaps predictable. Whatever the strict legalities the grant of an injunction is always a matter for the discretion of the court; and here the exercise of that discretion was at least understandable. Reading between the lines, the decision appears as not only judicial but judicious: it avoided an order that would give rise to controversy and upheaval, and threw the ball back into the elected government’s court to deal with a problem which is, after all, of the government’s own making.
What of the future? For the country as a whole it is certainly worrying. There will be, for better or worse, increasing feelings that the interests of immigrants with no clear right to be here are being preferred to the those of the settled population. Such impressions are never healthy; further unrest is likely, and not only in Epping.
For the government, this prospect is almost unrelentingly grim. Apparent uncontrolled immigration continues to be near the top of voters’ concerns, and in particular to worry the electors in Red Wall and other not-too-prosperous areas that Labour desperately needs to attract and retain. Until now ministers had been hoping – by judiciously publicised removals and statements of a serious intention to clamp down on immigration and asylum – to defuse the issue and turn attention elsewhere. That strategy is now a dead duck. Further demonstrations outside asylum hotels are a racing certainty, and will provide yet more headaches for the Home Secretary. If she does nothing the demonstrators will continue to grab the headlines, whatever distractions the government tries to introduce. If she hints to police that stronger measures need to be taken, she will invite more accusations of two-tier policing.
Meanwhile there is no obvious end in sight to the problem of ever-increasing number of immigrants. The aim to empty hotels within a year or so seems increasingly remote. And while the owner of the Bell in Epping has told the judge it is looking at ending its current use by April 2026, I’m disinclined to bet on things being much different by next summer.
And the political beneficiary of all this? Despite all the efforts of Chris Philp for the Tories to to cash in (he was very quick to condemn the decision this afternoon), Reform – for the last few weeks beginning to lose a little of its shine – will one suspects clean up once again among the forgotten peripheries of Britain.
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