If the Prime Minister thinks the less well-off will celebrate their wealthy neighbours' suffering, he is sorely mistaken.
Andy Burnham's announcement that asylum seekers are set to be housed across leafy, middle-class England perfectly encapsulates why Labour has struggled with ordinary English voters for the last two decades, they do not understand immigration, and they do not understand class. The Great British PAC says no to Burnham's plans, and it says so on behalf of millions of voters who have watched, year after year, as a political class they did not elect to do this has imposed upon their communities a burden it refuses to carry itself, until now, when the burden is being deliberately spread not out of competence, but out of a warped sense of ideological fairness.
Burnham's announcement was a disaster in every conceivable way. Firstly, and most obviously, by suggesting the pain of hosting asylum seekers must be shared, he confirmed what people across the country have been saying for several years, that it can be a terrible local burden. Such an admission only makes sense politically if the Government appeared actively to be trying to stop the flow of boats, and then processing and returning those young men who arrived in this manner. That is not what people see. All they hear are excuses about how hard it all is.
Secondly, the timing was a disaster. The announcement landed straight after the massive incursion of illegal migrants into the Spanish territory of Ceuta, and after the sighting of huge new boats in the English Channel capable of carrying more than 250 men, culminating in a single vessel carrying 230 people reaching Britain, the largest number ever to make the journey in one boat, breaking the previous record of 165 set only months earlier. In effect, it looks as though the scale of the problem is so enormous that asylum seekers are simply spilling out into rural England. Thirdly, and this is yet to be felt in earnest, the pictures are going to be terrible. By housing asylum seekers in parts of England that could serve as a backdrop to an episode of Poirot, Reform and others will be able to portray the starkest, most extraordinary contrast, one that voters across the country will find shocking.
The Statistics That Damn Him
The official numbers tell a story Burnham cannot spin away. According to the Home Office's own immigration system statistics, small boat arrivals in the year ending March 2026 stood at 39,271, some 3 per cent higher than the year before, despite the Prime Minister's insistence that "crossings are down". In 2025, around 41,500 people were detected crossing the Channel, the second-highest annual figure on record, as the Migration Observatory at Oxford has documented. Meanwhile, the backlog of refused asylum seekers still in the country has reportedly swelled by 72 per cent in a single year to around 87,450, a second, hidden backlog that grows precisely because removals are not keeping pace.
Returns are rising, it is true, with the Home Office reporting 11,918 asylum-related returns in the year to March 2026, up 17 per cent. But set against tens of thousands of new arrivals and a refusal backlog approaching six figures, this is a bucket against a flood. The Government boasts of closing asylum hotels, yet the number of migrants housed in privately rented houses and flats has increased by more than 7,000 since the election, to 68,538. Hotels may be down from their peak of 56,018, as the official asylum accommodation figures show, but the people have not gone home, they have simply been moved into Britain's housing stock, competing directly with British families for homes.
Fact Box
A Punishment Beating for Middle England
At present, to an extent, asylum seekers have often been hidden in plain sight. In hotels in less affluent, often multicultural areas, you would not necessarily know who was an asylum seeker and who was not. Now, villages with small and settled populations will find themselves dwarfed by large-scale accommodation facilities next door.
This takes us to the issue of class. In justifying the move, a Downing Street source said, "Andy feels the current system is unfair, and as a point of principle, he wants to see a redress of the distribution." Extraordinarily, this source confirmed the move would cost more money, apparently because of the difficulty of finding cheap accommodation in leafy areas, "He acknowledges that it would cost more money to do it fairly, but that is what we need to do."
This sounds like Labour's justification for a wealth tax, as well as its earlier taxes on private education, and it reflects how the modern Left sees class. They seem to think there is a negative working-class identity, formed primarily through hostility and struggle, as if there were a zero-sum game in which working-class people suffer because of middle-class privilege.
The problem is, the English working class does not think like this. While they tend to favour wealth taxes and a progressive tax system more generally, this is entirely because they want more money for the NHS and other public services. They do not want a punishment beating meted out to middle-class people out of hostility or envy. Most working-class people want to get on themselves, and certainly want their children to have opportunities for a better life, and they do not view the affluent as the enemy.
More to the point, their identity is not formed by negative perceptions of struggle, but by positive perceptions of their local area and their country. They tend to love their towns and their local heritage, and they tend to love England too. This is why they cherish their fading high streets, their heritage sites and their local football clubs, but also, usually, the British Armed Forces and the Royal Family. It is this mix of local and national patriotism which explains their hostility to the housing of so many asylum seekers in their towns. Most feel their local area cannot physically cope with so many new arrivals, and most dislike the idea of a country with no border control.
The English working class will not come to think Burnham's policy is fair and good. On the contrary, they will sympathise with those now affected and conclude it underlines the incompetence of the political class. If Burnham is hoping working-class people will think "now the posh people can have some", he will be sorely disappointed.
Fairness Cuts Both Ways
There is another important aspect of the English working class the Left forgets, which is directly applicable here. Where class hostility emerges, it is because of perceptions of unearned, unfair wealth or benefits. This is why working-class people did not like the idea that rich "non-doms" seemed to pay little in tax, and why they were angry with Rishi Sunak, who faced allegations that his family was doing everything to keep its taxes down while everyone else struggled through a cost-of-living crisis.
To the English working class, fairness trumps everything. This is why they are the toughest on welfare cheats, and why so many are so angry with the current asylum system, which appears to be set up to attract and then reward those who come here illegally.
Where Does His Commitment Actually Lie?
Here is the question voters are entitled to ask, where does Burnham's commitment actually lie? Pressed on whether he would commit to stopping small boat crossings by the next election, he refused. "It would be wrong, I think, for me to make a prediction now based on a timeline," he said, promising instead a "relentless focus" on the issue. Relentless focus is not a policy. Deportations at scale, a genuine deterrent, and closing the Channel as a route into Britain, that is a policy, and it is the only one the British people, who must come first in their own country, are asking for.
Instead, the country gets dispersal into middle England, protests from Epping to Thetford, where 15 people were arrested after demonstrators targeted homes they believed housed asylum seekers, and plans to convert sites like RAF Barnham into accommodation. In Wigan, the number of HMOs rose by 160 per cent between 2021 and 2025, with around 160 of 900 such houses used for single male asylum seekers. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, called it "another vindictive punishment beating" for the middle classes, and warned of the consequences of flooding neighbourhoods with thousands of illegal entrants.
Burnham plays on his working-class image. Despite the Scouse accent and the Everton gear, this week he looks like another out-of-touch left-wing activist, a man whose energies are directed not at stopping the boats, but at redistributing the consequences of his own failure to stop them. Deportations, deterrence and closing the Channel should be his mission, and the British people should be his priority. Until they plainly are, the Great British PAC's verdict will stand, and his migrant plan will blow up in his face.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are those of the author.