Uh oh. Protests have broken out outside an empty Canary Wharf hotel after claims began to circulate that migrants were being relocated to the venue from Epping. In response to the rumours spread by controversial figures like Tommy Robinson, protestors have over the last 24 hours turned up to the hotel in the centre of London’s financial district and tied England flags to posts outside.
While the Home Office has indeed reserved over 400 beds at Canary Wharf’s four-star Britannia International Hotel – at an agreed cost of £81-a-night for every migrant that moves in – the department has stated that there are no asylum seekers or guests inside the venue at present. Yet those unhappy with the UK’s immigration system headed to the hotel to protest after social media reports that migrants were being moved from Epping’s Bell Hotel to the City. So far, ten demonstrators have been arrested.
The Home Office told the Times that the social media claims are untrue – but government concerns about a repeat of last summer’s riots are growing. Today’s Canary Wharf protest follows days of disruption in Epping over accommodation for asylum seekers which has since seen calls for the chief of Essex Police to resign. Reform leader Nigel Farage called for Ben-Julian Harrington to stand down after it emerged that the force had escorted pro-migrant protestors from Stand Up to Racism to the hotel housing immigrants in Epping. Police had initially denied that activists were taken to the site, but after footage emerged the force backtracked. For his party Harrington told a press conference this afternoon:
No, I am not [resigning]. I am not going to do that. This is not about me, this is about the communities of Essex. The issue is not about my resignation. The issue is about an effective police operation that keeps the communities of Epping safe.
Just yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told Cabinet colleagues that a number of factors including immigration and increased social media are having a ‘profound impact on society’, while Sir Keir Starmer told his ministers the repair of Britain’s ‘social fabric’ is crucial after No. 10 officials warned that the UK is ‘fraying at the edges’.
Parliament may have just risen for recess, but Starmer’s work doesn’t look like it’ll get much easier anytime soon…
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