Immigration is on the minds of millions of working-class people, and is becoming a massive crisis for Keir Starmer.
The number of small-boat crossings is at its highest rate ever. And the number of asylum-seekers in Britain is at the highest level since records began in 2001.
There have been several protests, some of which have turned violent towards the police. There’s a deep anger around this issue. And the tension is rising.
Why is this happening?
The highest number of asylum-seekers come from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Eritrea.
They come to the UK because, for years, British imperialism has interfered in these countries. It invaded Afghanistan, dropped bombs on Syria, and now imposes sanctions on Iran.
British politicians do this because US politicians tell them to. British capitalism is so dependent on the ‘special relationship’ with the USA that politicians in Westminster are completely subservient to those in Washington.
But British politicians don’t say that out loud. They lie and say that they’re launching invasions, dropping bombs, and destroying countries because they’re fighting for ‘democracy’ around the world.
The result is that the people whose lives get torn apart by British and US imperialism decide to come to the UK, in search of the ‘democracy’ and ‘wonders of capitalism’ they’ve been promised.
There’s more of this to come. Thanks to capitalism, the world is facing more wars, more climate change, and more things that can ruin entire countries.
Keir Starmer wants to put Britain right in the middle of this storm. He’s promised to increase military spending to 5 percent of GDP, so that British imperialism can continue its meddling abroad.
We can bet that this will result in more refugees in the years ahead.
This isn’t fair on anyone
To deal with the rising number of asylum-seekers, the government is spending £3 billion a year on hotels to house them.
On top of that, asylum-seekers are given about £10 a week to cover their expenses. That’s horrifyingly little for someone to live on. But because of the numbers involved, it pushes the government’s annual asylum bill to almost £5 billion. This is about the same amount as is spent on additional education costs for every secondary school pupil in the country this year.
So, the government is looking for cheaper options to house asylum-seekers, such as renting rooms or buying up houses. But that’s pushing up rent and house prices in working-class areas, which is forcing people out of their homes and neighbourhoods.
At a time when the cost of living is going up, wages are stagnant, and life is getting harder, this is making people angry.
This is a big part of the recent protests against asylum hotels.
The organiser of some of the protests around the Britannia hotel in Canary Wharf runs a local community centre and foodbank. “I want people to know that I don’t hate these men,” she said in a video on social media. “What I hate is the unfairness put upon us all.”
She continues:
“It is upsetting to know that they will enjoy three meals a day; air conditioning when it’s hot; heating cranked up to the highest when they’re cold. And we will continue to watch the old lady and the old man pick up a shopping basket – not a trolley, a shopping basket – and head for the reduced shelf. That is reality.”
It’s not hard to understand this point of view.
When rough sleeping has increased by 164 percent since 2010, and 161,500 children were homeless last year, spending billions on housing asylum-seekers in hotels can seem perverse. If we can do it for some people, why not all?
When the health system is being gutted, education underfunded, and services collapsing, it makes sense to talk about injustice; about things not being fair – because they’re not.
And given this situation, it’s no good just shouting ‘refugees welcome’, like the liberal, Guardian-reading, Socialist Workers Party crowd does.
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That doesn’t actually solve any of the problems. It doesn’t stop the wars that are creating refugees. It doesn’t give refugees more than £10 a week to survive on. And it doesn’t stop the cost-of-living crisis, the strain on public services, and the housing crisis.
So what is the solution?
The fact is, as long as our foreign policy is decided according to the interests of western imperialism and the capitalist establishment, the problem will continue.
As long as profit-hungry landlords and private companies own all the land, houses, hotels, and construction companies, the problem will continue.
As long as the bosses of food-delivery platforms, car washes, and hospitality companies continue to exploit the cheap labour of illegal immigrants, the problem will continue.
In short, as long as profit comes before need, this problem will continue.
The solution is to take the land, houses, hotels, construction companies, and big businesses out of the hands of the billionaires, and have working-class people run them democratically instead.
We’ll prioritise need over profit. And in the sixth richest country in the world, we’ll find there’s more than enough to meet everyone’s needs.
That means that solving the migration crisis means fighting capitalism.
Anyone who says it can be solved without getting rid of the capitalist system is a liar.
Liars-in-chief
Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson are the liars-in-chief. They take all that working-class anger about the lack of resources, the cost of living, and the housing crisis, and deliberately divert it away from the rich, the billionaires, and the capitalist system.
The banks and billionaires have privatised everything, pushed prices up, extracted billions in profit from our work, and avoided all their taxes. Yet apparently this has nothing to do with the crisis we’re facing today, according to Farage and Robinson.
In fact, they say, you should blame poor people fleeing British bombs in Syria – and now living on a tenner a week – for why you can’t get a GP appointment and why house prices are through the roof.
The rich have taken everything and left us with a few crumbs. And now Farage and Robinson dress us up in England flags and make us fight refugees for what’s left.
They’re turning Britain into a real-life Hunger Games, while they laugh all the way to the bank.
It’s ironic that the protests outside the Britannia hotel in Canary Wharf are happening in the shadow of the HSBC and JPMorgan skyscrapers. If you want to know where the real problem is, it’s in those towers that have been built out of the exploitation and misery of working-class people in Britain and all over the world.
The reality is that Farage actually benefits from the big businesses that cause – and profit from – the crisis we all face. This year’s Reform UK conference is inviting corporate bosses to socialise with its leaders in exchange for a donation of £250,000.
Farage is no friend of the working class. He openly argues in favour of big business, profit, and the capitalist establishment. He has no intention of actually solving the problems we face.
He just wants to pin all the blame on asylum-seekers who can’t defend themselves, while he promotes his political career and lives it up on his rich buddies’ money.
Class war, not culture war
One way that Robinson and co. are trying to divert anger away from the rich and towards asylum-seekers is through racism. They say that asylum-seekers’ culture – supposedly riddled with criminality, in general, and sexual crimes, in particular – is incompatible with British culture.
Issues around the cost of living are part of the motivation for the recent protests. But some of this racist culture stuff is also being thrown into the mix.
The same person quoted above, who spoke about the unfairness of the situation facing working-class people in east London, also said this about asylum seekers:
“Like many locals my age, my dad fought in the war…unfortunately Dad you would be spinning in your grave. We have another war now Dad. One closer to home. One that the enemy is disguised. One that don’t play fairly and that pick on our vulnerable and our young. I will continue to fight to protect our women and children so that they won’t become victims of predators.”
This ‘culture clash’ rhetoric is absolute rubbish from start to finish.
Anyone who knows the Isle of Dogs, an east London neighbourhood near the Britannia refugee hotel in Canary Wharf, will tell you that the pubs on the island are full of great local people.
But there are also plenty of drug dealers, petty criminals, old East End villains, and men with attitudes to women that range from questionable to openly misogynistic.
That criminality and misogyny isn’t coming from the ‘alien cultures’ of asylum-seekers – it’s part of that ‘Great British culture’ that Tommy Robinson says he wants to defend.
If you want to find the biggest criminals in the area, have a look in Canary Wharf itself. Those skyscrapers are full of the biggest money-laundering, cocaine-addicted, sexually-degenerate crooks in the country.
Is that the ‘British culture’ that Robinson is trying to defend?
Those people trying to turn the immigration crisis into a culture war are dangerous hypocrites and liars. They’ll wrap themselves in an England flag while they privatise healthcare, push up rent, and give more of our money to the rich.
We need to reject all that. What we’re fighting isn’t a culture war – it’s a class war.
The ‘left’ is in an absolute state
Racism is increasing in Britain right now. And with England flags and Union Jacks going up on lampposts around the country, you can feel the tension rising.
The memory of last summer’s far-right riots isn’t far away, especially when you’re seeing racist graffiti going up on takeaways, Muslim centres, and even people’s houses.
The most hardened racists and far-right thugs feel confident because no-one is putting forward an effective counter-argument to Farage and Robinson. They’re the only ones tapping into the anger in British society – and they’re diverting it away from the billionaires, and towards minorities.
The culture war arguments aren’t very convincing, even to those who repeat them. As the east London protest organiser says: “I’m not a stupid person. I know that the majority of these men will not harm a hair on a child’s head.”
These are not the words of a dyed-in-the-wool racist. But the problem is that no-one is answering this stuff clearly and firmly.
This leaves the door open to Farage and Robinson’s poisonous racism. And this, in turn, emboldens a far-right menace that poses a real, physical threat to millions of people in Britain.
It’s not difficult to argue that the real problem isn’t the small boats, it’s the super yachts. But that means taking on the rich and powerful, including all the politicians who support them – from Starmer to Farage.
No-one on the so-called ‘left’ is doing this properly. Jeremy Corbyn and the SWP just keep repeating ‘refugees welcome’ in a vague moralistic way. The official ‘Communist’ Party of Britain, meanwhile, agrees with the establishment, and has joined the capitalist chorus demanding border controls.
The only serious way to fight Farage and Robinson is on a class basis: uniting and mobilising to take the banks, land, wealth, and power away from those who have created this crisis in the first place. We need to run society as a genuine democracy – for need, not profit.
We’re not trying to make little changes. We want a root-and-branch revolution of the whole system. That means openly fighting capitalism.
Until the so-called ‘left’ grows a pair and fights for this, Farage and Robinson will keep marching on.
It’s time to get real, get revolutionary, and solve the migration crisis by getting organised and overthrowing capitalism.
Easy pickings for Reform
Community members in Weoley Castle, Birmingham have put up hundreds of St George and Union Jack flags to express their sense of pride in being British and English.
For obvious reasons, there’s a backlash. The council is being pushed towards taking the flags down.
But there is big support for the flags in some local Facebook communities, and real anger expressed if the council were to take them down. Reform is praising the local communities for showing off their national pride. There has even been some local media coverage.
I’ve spoken to a couple of these lads putting up flags. As an immigrant I’m terrified but I understand their anger. It is pointed justifiably at the government – and then completely wrongly at the illegal immigrants arriving on boats.
I fear if no one pays attention to these people and addresses their concerns and anger, it will be easy pickings for Reform at the next election. The ‘Your Party’ seems far away and too abstract to address this right now and the need for action is urgent.
I feel like if someone spoke in the community about capitalism and the rich causing all the working class struggles, we could win so many people over.
But if no one says differently, they’ll just believe Reform and that it is the immigrants on boats.
Triin Major Afshar, Birmingham
“Is it the Euros?”
While in Birmingham recently, I noticed lampposts bedecked with England flags. “Strange, is it the Euros?” I asked myself.
Reading up, I discovered that this recent enthusiasm for flags had started in Woeley Castle. That rang a bell: the 002 bus to Woeley Castle was my school bus.
The journey was usually uneventful – unless I came home late and had to wait for the 002 on my own…
My old school was a grammar school near Woeley Castle, which over time had large amounts of council housing built around it. Thus, one of the ‘poshest’ schools in Birmingham is in one of the poorest areas of the city. The child poverty rate in Woeley Castle is 40 percent.
Alone at the bus shelter, my school uniform would make me a bit of a target. The local kids hated us, full of class hatred from age eleven. I personally received a couple of black eyes. One time, local kids with hammers chased students from my school.
How much that hatred must have festered since then, without any coherent outlet.
On this visit, I passed through the leafier area of Edgebaston, up the road from Woeley Castle. Most of my schoolmates from wealthier backgrounds came from this part of town. There were no flags there.
When I hear talk of how these flags are about “taking our country back”, I think back to Krupskaya relating how Lenin, walking through London and seeing these extreme disparities, would mutter to himself that there are truly two nations in Britain.
One nation feels very comfortable; they scoff at the idea of “taking our country back” because they know themselves to be the owners of this country and everything in it.
The other burns with hatred and feels it has nothing, not even a country. The only part of it that is ‘theirs’ is its flag.
Of course, this whole ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ is full of reactionary nonsense. They were closer to being on target when, as kids, they beat up my rich schoolmates than now, targeting migrants and asylum seekers.
But the only way we are going to convince them to loosen their grip on the flag is when we offer something more substantial to hold onto.
Ben Curry
“We should be communists!”
Recently I was in the pub with my partner, discussing Reform’s local elections success. Two men who voted Reform overheard us and came to make their case.
It surprised them that I completely agreed with much of why they were angry.
Of course, there were differences in our perspectives: they initially laid the blame for unemployment on migrant labour. I offered the perspective that low-paid work was an issue that affects all of us as working class people, and that immigration was being used as a weapon to turn us away from the real enemy of our class.
They agreed with this, and this allowed us to move onto a conversation about class-consciousness and capitalism.
They both worked up to 16-hour days and six day weeks to feed their families and pay rent, which got us onto the subject of why this was – when billionaires, extracting the wealth produced by our labour, are doing no work at all.
We spoke for over an hour about the crumbling NHS, about privatisation and the lack of public investment.
At the end, I asked if they would consider backing a communist movement led by the workers. They responded with a wholehearted yes. One of them even called up a friend to say, “we’ve got it all worked out, it all comes down to capitalism and the billionaires, we should be communists!”
Sam Harvey, Peckham
Starmer’s Farage-ist turn
The Labour Party have released a disgusting and reactionary advert praising Starmer for deporting 35,000 people.
Since we’ve come into office, we’ve returned more than 35,000 people with no right to be here.
Be under no illusion – any attempt to reach the UK illegally will only end in failure, detention and return. pic.twitter.com/HuBz42ZKIh
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 28, 2025
We are fed up with migrants being blamed for problems created by the bosses. I would rather deport 1,000 bosses than see one worker stripped of their rights, their family, and their dignity.
Gareth, Leeds
