I sometimes wonder if Keir Starmer and his team even understand basic economics, like how supply and demand works, before making these kinds of decisions.
Imagine for a second: what if, for the next five years, all your rent, council tax, and gas and electricity bills were completely paid for? You’d be happy, right? Well, according to what’s happening now, one simple way to make that happen is to come into the country as a migrant. Then, like magic, the Home Office will cover all those costs for you.
This unbelievable situation was exposed by Serco, a private company working for the Home Office. Serco put out a call to landlords across areas like the North West, the Midlands, and the East of England, asking them to rent out their homes to the growing number of asylum seekers.
Under normal circumstances, most landlords would never dream of renting their valuable properties to tenants without proper documents. Many landlords have small businesses and depend on these properties for income. One of the first things asylum seekers do when they arrive in the UK – often crossing the English Channel – is to throw away their passports. That way, it’s much harder to check their real age, identity, or which country they actually come from.
Starmer and his team think it’s cheaper to put migrants into rented homes rather than keeping them in expensive hotels. And maybe that’s true. But surely, the real savings would come from simply not allowing so many migrants into the country in the first place.
In just the first four months of this year, 9,500 migrants arrived by boat — a 33% increase compared to last year. Have you noticed how nobody talks much anymore about cracking down on the gangs who arrange these crossings? It almost feels like Labour has shifted from wanting to stop these gangs to actually inviting them — or at least inviting the landlords to take part.
Because landlords are now being offered guaranteed payments to house asylum seekers, many of them will eagerly rent out their flats to the government rather than regular people. This will mean there are fewer homes available for everyone else. When supply goes down and demand stays high, prices always go up. That’s basic economics — and it seems like Starmer and his friends either don’t know this or don’t care.
Before reading the documents from Serco, I didn’t realize they already manage 7,000 properties where they house 30,000 migrants. No wonder it’s so hard to find a place to rent these days — and when you do, the rent is often too expensive for most people to afford.
Serco says that moving migrants into private homes will lower the nightly cost from £145 to £34. Sure, that’s a big saving on paper. But how long can we really keep doing this without seriously hurting our own housing market and communities?
I recently saw a poll that showed, for the first time, that people are now more worried about immigration than they are about the NHS or the cost of energy. And yet, we have a Prime Minister with a huge majority in Parliament who doesn’t seem to care about thousands of migrants arriving or the frustration and anger it’s causing across the country.
Starmer talks a lot about solving problems, but when it comes to action, he doesn’t really deliver. With new political parties like Reform and the Greens threatening Labour from both sides during the upcoming council elections, Starmer’s team tried to make a big announcement to The Telegraph. They said they want to make it harder for foreign students to stay in the UK by stopping them from taking low-paid jobs like those in healthcare.
But really, is that all? Making it harder for a few students to stay won’t solve the bigger problem. It’s just a headline grabber — not a real solution.
I’m willing to bet that in places like Runcorn and Moseley, where there’s a by-election because a Labour MP got drunk and assaulted someone, the Reform party will easily beat Labour at the polls. Labour voters are angry — not just about immigration, but about losing things like their winter fuel allowance, suffering from rising taxes, and feeling like the people in power are incompetent and can’t be replaced.
There’s a lot of talk that someone like Wes Streeting might make a better Labour leader. But honestly, it won’t matter who leads if Labour doesn’t take real action on the migration crisis. Until they do, they’ll stay unpopular and struggle badly in future elections.
In a way, it’s almost good news. By trying to please landlords instead of ordinary voters, Labour is basically guaranteeing that they will lose badly.
