Down and out in Birmingham and Rotherham

The Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, is opposite an RSPB nature reserve. For months, its 130 rooms have been fully booked, rented by the Home Office to house migrants. Last weekend, the hotel was surrounded by a mob who broke in and tried to burn it down. Most of the ground-floor windows are now covered with chipboard. The migrants, I was told, have been moved to another hotel.

‘It used to be migrant families that were housed here,’ says a woman in the Aldi carpark next door. ‘Now it’s just young men.’ The only other journalists here are from Chinese state TV, keen to show Britain descending into anarchy.

I knock on some doors to ask what local people think, but no one wants to talk to me. A nurse says she is about to go to work, while an elderly man says he can’t speak to me because his wife has medical issues. The streets around the hotel are well-kept new builds, but quiet. A woman in a 4×4 follows at a distance, taking photos of me on her smartphone.

In online groups, rioters talk about wanting their country back. They also worry they’ll be targeted by police. ‘If you have participated at a protest in England, grind down your electronic devices to dust with a belt sander or grinder immediately,’ one person warns. ‘The British government is about to come crashing down on you. They will empty the prisons of rapists and violent black and brown criminals to make room for thousands of white protestors. They will charge you for insurrection and attempted murder, especially anyone near the migrant hotel lit on fire.’

One Telegram chat, Southport Wake Up, had talk of a demonstration around Alum Rock in Birmingham.