FROM “GROWTH IN EVERY POSTCODE” TO “A MIGRANT IN EVERY POSTCODE”
The David Vance BriefingRead More
Did you see images of that humongous inflatable dinghy, absolutely stacked with 230 migrants, arriving in the UK? Well, taking time out from his pressing tour of Greggs the Baker, Prime Minister Andy Burnham sprang into action by declaring that middle-class areas must now “play their part” in accommodating asylum seekers!
Meanwhile, Angela Rayner was dispatched to do the media rounds, where she chose to remind us about the women and children.
Welcome to Labour’s latest attempt to get on top of an issue — by completely getting it wrong!
That single inflatable boat carrying 230 people smashed the previous record of 165 people on one vessel. We don’t have a small-boats issue anymore; we have a big-boats problem! To put the sheer scale of this in context, an average Boeing 737 carries around 180 people!
Now, wherever you are on the political spectrum, packing 230 people into an inflatable craft and ten sending it across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world is grotesque and reckless. It also represents a TOTAL FAILURE at the French end, where the authorities seem to be taking the proverbial while pocketing around £1 billion of British taxpayers’ cash!
Burnham claims he understands the public anger. He even paid a little lip service to the issue by promising a “relentless focus” on the crossings and added that his Government would continue until it delivered the “eradication” people wanted.
Sounds good but there is just one small problem. He wouldn’t say when. Or how.
Indeed, when pressed on the issue, Burnham specifically declined to predict when the crossings would actually end. The political promise therefore boils down to this:
We are going to eradicate them. We just can’t tell you when.
I’m not going to open the champagne just yet. Are you?
You see, whilst Burnham was talking tough about stopping the boats, he was also making another argument which I think is much more alarming.
When asked about plans to accommodate 1,250 migrants at a former military site in Oxfordshire, Burnham said Britain couldn’t continue with poorer communities receiving most of the asylum dispersal.
“All parts of the country,” he said, needed to “play their part”.
That’s the pivot! The political question is no longer simply:
How do we stop people entering Britain illegally?
It becomes:
Where should we put them once they arrive?
For years now, working-class communities all across our country have bitterly complained that they bear a disproportionate share of the consequences of mass migration and asylum accommodation. I think the statistics rather prove that.
So, in the narrowest sense imaginable, you could claim that Burnham may actually have identified something real!
But his solution is disturbing.
He doesn’t want to end the burden. Oh no, he wants to share it around.
WTF!!!
In other words, if communities are angry about large numbers of so called asylum seekers being accommodated in their neighbourhoods, Labour’s answer increasingly appears to be not fewer asylum seekers but asylum seekers in more neighbourhoods.
Perhaps there will soon be a little bit of multicultural enrichment coming to a leafy village near you? Find that reassuring?
Then along came the bumbling Queen of the North, Angela Rayner.
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4 following the 230-person crossing, Rayner described those making the journey as “desperate, vulnerable people”. She condemned the criminal gangs and spoke of them putting “often… children and women” into unseaworthy vessels.
If only a violin could have accompanied her!
Now, Rayner did not say that most Channel migrants are women and children. No, that particular accolade belongs elsewhere. So it would be wrong to accuse her of saying something she didn’t say.
But why reach instinctively for “women and children” when discussing the composition of the boats?
Because the official statistics paint a very different overall picture.
I went and checked for you!
Home Office figures have previously shown that, since 2018, around 755 of small-boat arrivals were adult males, while about 16% ere children. In the first half of 2025, the proportion who were children had actually fallen to around 10%!. The latest Home Office statistics also say that 71% of all detected arrivals through illegal routes since 2018 have been adult males.
Even the Home Office itself acknowledges an important point that rarely seems to make it into sympathetic media interviews: dangerous routes such as Channel crossings have a lower proportion of women and children.
So yes, women cross the Channel. Yes, children cross the Channel. And yes, some of them may indeed be frightened and vulnerable.
But if you want to have an honest conversation with the British public, then you need to tell them what the migrant population actually looks like — and the dominant demographic is plainly adult men. That’s the inconvenient truth Rayner was ignoring!
When the British public sees photographs and videos of boat after boat containing large numbers of young adult men, and then sees Government ministers respond by immediately talking about “women and children”, people notice the disconnect.
There is potentially a dishonesty in play here.
The polls show us time after time that voters conclude politicians are trying to manage their perception rather than confront what they can see. When that happens, trust disappears very quickly.
Here’s another statistic for you to think about, dear reader.
In the year ending March, 39,271 people arrived in Britain by small boat. That was actually 3% higher than the corresponding previous 12-month period. The number of boats may have fallen, but smugglers are now packing dramatically more people into each vessel: the average rose to 63 people per boat.
That’s HUGE and that’s the real significance of today’s political interventions.
Burnham uses language that tells you Labour knows public patience is running out. Hence his use of the word “eradication”. Rayner’s language tells you that another instinct remains deeply embedded within Labour: to frame illegal migration primarily through vulnerability and humanitarianism.
Burnham’s Oxfordshire comments now suggest a third strand is emerging. If the Government cannot OR will not stop the boats, then the political consequences of accommodating those who arrive must apparently be more evenly distributed.
The old socialist creed was “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Labour’s new version seems rather simpler:
From the boats to YOUR postcode!
Or perhaps we should borrow Burnham’s own slogan:
From “growth in every postcode” to “a migrant in every postcode”.
Stop them? Nah. Humanise them — and then spread them around.
That increasingly seems to be the policy.
But none of it answers the fundamental question.
Why on earth should somebody who has already travelled through safe European countries, reached the French coast, then paid a smuggler and entered Britain without permission have a reasonable expectation that Britain will accommodate them while their claim is processed? This is the crux of the whole issue.
Until the Government is prepared to confront that, the rest is largely bluster.
It can change the hotels and move migrants into HMOs. It can change the towns that house them. It can change the contracts with France. It can even change the language ministers use on Radio 4.
But the smugglers will simply change the size of the dinghies. And these increasingly huge vessels will keep coming!
Telling the British public that the burden should now be shared more evenly isn’t the same thing as controlling the border. It’s not even close.
Starmer refused to deal with this issue, and Burnham appears to be following exactly the same route — rather like the dinghies themselves!
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