London’s Green Boroughs of Sanctuary for illegals!
The David Vance BriefingRead More
If you ever have the misfortune to walk through Lewisham or Hackney these days, the chances are that you’ll hear the same boast from the new Green administrations: they’ve drawn a line.
What is this line, you ask?
Well, no more helping the Home Office with immigration raids unless a judge absolutely forces them. Newham, the first Labour-led council to join the club, passed the same motion last week. Add in Lambeth, Waltham Forest, Southwark and Haringey and you now have seven London boroughs that have decided that national immigration law is optional!
This is a taste of the future under Labour and the Greens! Criminality is best ignored.
Elections have consequences and so it was only after the May 2026 local elections the Green Party grabbed outright control of Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest, and installed Green mayors in the first two, and formed the Green-Lib Dem coalition that runs Southwark. Haringey is Green-led in minority. Lambeth has a large Green presence.
So none of what you are seeing is “accidental” This is the deliberate outcome of a party that treats law enforcement as a moral failing rather than a function of government.
Councils say they will still obey clear legal duties. They simply will not share any data proactively, will not lend any staff or any buildings, and will not coordinate housing, education or health services with immigration teams. In practice that means an intelligence-led visit still happens, but the local authority steps aside. It opts out.
I see from Home Office reports that there 2,715 illegal working visits in London in 2025 alone. The Green/Labour freaks removing council cooperation won’t halt those visits; it will just make them less efficient and signals to anyone watching that certain postcodes are softer targets. This is criminal sanctuary we are witnessing.
The immediate consequence of this are felt locally. Boroughs that already struggle with temporary accommodation, school places and primary care now advertise reduced cooperation. What happens the? Well, the word travels. People who would prefer to avoid enforcement notices are rational; they move, or stay, where the risk is lower. It’s just so basic! Then the very same councils then complain about pressure on services and demand more money from central government. It is a closed loop: restrict enforcement, absorb the resulting demand, then present the demand as proof that enforcement is cruel. Taxpayers in those boroughs and elsewhere fund both ends of the loop. It’s suicidal empathy at the local Town Hall and codified by the Greens.
If you step back and consider the longer term impact, these Green/Labour policies erode the idea that the law is the same across the capital. There is a damned good reason why Immigration enforcement is a national competence. When seven far left boroughs create “sanctuary corridors” in partnership with activist groups, they are not merely declining to assist; they are building parallel administrative systems.
Residents who pay council tax, queue for housing and send their children to overcrowded schools are told that consistency with national rules is secondary to the feelings of those without status. The London Assembly has already recorded a motion condemning the approach; the Home Office continues to carry out the visits. The gap between what the law requires and what local politicians will support simply widens and that is the measure of the dysfunction.
It’s not as if any of this is hidden. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (Yes, it really does exist!!) openly celebrated the six earlier decisions and published a template motion. Green mayors speak of defending migrant workers and building sanctuary networks. The language that they use is pretty consistent: raids create fear, data-sharing is hostile, non-cooperation is solidarity.
What is rarely costed is the effect on people already here who expected the rules they followed, or the rules others were supposed to follow, to remain in force. Housing lists do not expand capacity because councillors pass motions. School places do not appear because data is withheld. The people who feel the shortage first are usually the ones who cannot vote with their feet.
Local government has always had some level of discretion. However it has not previously treated the deliberate non-enforcement of national immigration law as a point of pride. These seven councils have now done so in public. It is a rebellion against the rule of law and an incentive for MORE illegal migrants. This should leave us in no doubt what the Green Party – Labour axis has in mind for our country.
STOP! Enjoyed this? Then don’t leave it here.
I publish The David Vance Briefing most mornings: the stories, the arguments and the political fights that matter, stripped of the mainstream filter.
Subscribe free and it comes straight to you. No algorithm. No editor softening it.
Paid is different. You get the exclusive Saturday Briefing, where I take one of the week’s biggest issues and go much harder and deeper. You also pay for the thing the licence fee and the advertisers won’t: commentary that doesn’t answer to them.
Free if you want the daily hit. Paid if you want it to keep existing. That’s the deal.
