Laurie Wastell's July 2025 Spectator piece paints a vivid picture of a Britain teetering on the edge, with migrant hotel protests erupting from Epping to Canary Wharf, fuelled by unaddressed grievances over asylum policies. Yet, as "tinderbox Britain" smoulders, the Labour government's response isn't to tackle the root causes, uncontrolled migration, strained communities, and a broken asylum system, but to double down on policing online speech. The creation of the National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, housed in the National Police Coordination Centre (NPCC), signals a disturbing pivot toward surveillance over substance. This essay argues that the UK state is dodging the immigration crisis by obsessing over censorship, misdirecting resources, and ignoring public concerns, all while fanning the flames of discontent.
The spark in Epping, Essex, was a 38-year-old Ethiopian asylum seeker, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, charged with attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl just eight days after arriving in the UK. This incident, at the Bell Hotel housing asylum seekers, ignited protests that spread to Norwich, Leeds, Bournemouth, and beyond, with crowds chanting "Save our kids" and "Stop the boats." Over 25,000 migrants crossed the Channel in 2025 alone, and the Home Office's reliance on 210 hotels, costing £3 billion annually, has turned communities like Epping, a middle-class market town, into flashpoints. Locals, not just far-Right agitators, are furious, with signs reading "I'm not far Right, I'm worried about my kids."
These protests reflect deep-seated frustration: communities feel betrayed by a state that houses single male migrants near schools and shopping centres without consultation. In Diss, Norfolk, plans to replace asylum-seeking families with single men at the Park Hotel sparked clashes, with South Norfolk Council warning of risks to "community cohesion." The 2024 Southport riots, triggered by a knife attack that killed three girls, showed how quickly anger can escalate when trust is eroded. Yet, the government's response sidesteps the core issue, migration policy, and targets the messenger: social media.
The Home Office's National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, launched in July 2025, is tasked with "maximising social media intelligence" to flag potential unrest. Housed in the NPCC, this elite unit draws detectives nationwide to monitor anti-migrant sentiment online, ostensibly to prevent riots like those in Southport. But critics, including Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp and Reform UK's Nigel Farage, call it a "sinister" step toward a "surveillance state," accusing Labour of policing opinions rather than streets. The Online Safety Act (OSA), effective July 2025, amplifies this, with Ofcom enforcing rules that censor "violent" or "abusive" content, including protest footage. Posts about Epping and Leeds demonstrations were restricted for UK users, sparking accusations of censorship from the Free Speech Union and journalists like Annunziata Rees-Mogg.
This focus on online speech is a deliberate distraction. The OSA, inherited from the Conservatives, labels content about "illegal immigration" as harmful, chilling open debate. A Commons speech by Katie Lam on grooming gangs was age-restricted on X, showing how far censorship extends. Big Brother Watch warns of "Orwellian" overreach, citing COVID-era disinformation units that silenced dissent. The NPCC's history of enforcing lockdown rules under Operation Talla, raises fears of similar heavy-handedness. Instead of addressing migration's root causes, the state is building a digital panopticon, alienating the public further.
While police struggle to manage protests, eight officers were injured in Epping, with rocks and eggs thrown, the Home Office prioritises social media surveillance over frontline policing. The £3 billion spent on asylum hotels could fund 60,000 police officers or 12 NHS hospitals, yet Labour boasts of reducing hotels from 400 to 200 while opening new ones, like the Britannia in Canary Wharf. The "Failure to Travel" policy, which cuts support for asylum seekers refusing to move from hotels to cheaper housing, is touted as reform but merely shuffles the problem, risking unrest by forcing single men into reluctant communities.
Contrast this with the pension crisis, where mass migration is falsely peddled as a solution to an aging population, despite evidence of fertility convergence and negative fiscal contributions. A 2023 Centre for Policy Studies report shows 72% of visa holders earn below average wages, draining public services. The state's refusal to reform pensions, like adopting Sweden's notional defined-contribution model, mirrors its avoidance of migration reform, preferring quick fixes over structural change.
Deputy PM Angela Rayner acknowledges "real concerns" about immigration, yet Labour's actions, censoring speech, housing migrants in affluent areas, and failing to stop 25,000 Channel crossings in 2025, ignores public sentiment. Epping's protests, driven by locals, not just far-Right groups like Britain First, show communities feel unheard. The Rotherham grooming scandal, where police allegedly participated in abuse, and a secret Afghan resettlement program further erode trust, yet the state doubles down on optics over accountability.
The government could act: reform human rights laws, as Suella Braverman suggests, to deport failed asylum seekers; end hotel use by creating secure processing centres; or consult communities before housing decisions. Instead, it chooses surveillance and punishment, jailing a mother, Lucy Connolly, for 31 months over a racist tweet, while migrants like Kebatu face trial for alleged assaults. This "two-tier" approach, as Philp calls it, fuels perceptions of injustice, pushing "Middle England" toward civil disobedience.
The Home Office denies policing opinions, claiming the NPCC unit tracks "real-time information" to protect communities, not censor speech. Supporters argue social media fuels unrest, citing Southport's riots, and that monitoring prevents violence. They point to Labour's plan to end hotel use by 2029 as progress.
Rebuttal: Monitoring "anti-migrant sentiment" inherently targets lawful speech, as seen with censored protest footage. The 2029 hotel closure goal is distant, and moving migrants to flats risks spreading tension, as seen in Ballymena's anti-Roma riots. Southport's unrest stemmed from unaddressed migration concerns, not just social media, and censorship only deepens distrust, as 62% of Britons feel communities change without consent.
Britain's immigration crisis, 25,000 Channel crossings, £3 billion in hotel costs, and protests from Epping to Norwich, is a fire the state refuses to extinguish. Instead of reforming asylum policies, consulting communities, or securing borders, Labour polices X posts and censors dissent, echoing the avoidance seen in pension failures or Rotherham's betrayals. The NPCC's surveillance unit, backed by the OSA, risks turning Britain into a "surveillance state," as Farage warns, while doing nothing to address the "real concerns" Rayner acknowledges. By choosing control over solutions, the state fans the flames of "tinderbox Britain," proving it will do anything — except fix the crisis.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/28/the-state-will-do-anything-but-fix-the-migrant-crisis/
"Migrant hotel protests are erupting across the country, as 'tinderbox' Britain catches fire, says Laurie Wastell in the Spectator. But as the state launches another clampdown on online speech, our politicians will do anything but fix the migrant crisis. Here's an excerpt.
What began with a series of protests in Epping, Essex, over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a recently arrived Ethiopian migrant, has now spread, as Brits air long-standing grievances about asylum seekers they have been forced to host in their own communities.
Demonstrations have so far been reported in Bournemouth, Southampton and Portsmouth, Norwich, Leeds and Wolverhampton, Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, Altrincham and even at Canary Wharf in London. With years of unaddressed anger rapidly making itself felt, the police, pulled in all directions, are struggling to keep up. "Local commanders are once again being forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps," admits the head of the Police Federation.
Still, it seems there is one thing the Government is more than happy to devote resources to: trawling the internet for anti-migrant sentiment. The Telegraph reports that an elite team of police officers convened by the Home Office is set to monitor social media to flag up early signs of unrest. Working out of the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in Westminster the new National Internet Intelligence Investigations team will "maximise social media intelligence" gathering in order to "help local forces manage public safety threats and risks".
If this new division was just about intelligence-gathering that would be one thing. It's true that social media is in invaluable resource for following events on the ground at such gatherings, while local Facebook groups are often where grassroots protests are organised.
Yet we know that when it comes to the British state and social media, censorship and punishment for online speech is never far behind. Ever since Sir Keir Starmer repeatedly linked the Southport unrest last year with social media, the idea has firmly taken root in Whitehall that the best way to stop unrest is to aggressively police the internet. Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, already takes this view, and the link has even been drawn in Department for Education guidance on how to talk to schoolchildren about the Southport disorder. In a recent report, the police inspectorate said that forces must be "better prepared and resourced to monitor, analyse, use and respond to online content", which it argues was a risk to public safety. This general zeal for social-media policing is why Big Brother Watch believes the new unit is very likely to infringe on free speech. The investigations team is "Orwellian" and "disturbing", says Interim Director Rebecca Vincent, creating the possibility that it "will attempt to interfere with online content" as other government bodies are known to have done during Covid.
What is obvious, Laurie concludes, is that the state should not be housing migrants "in hotels, in an Essex market town 500 yards from a school; on the Bournemouth beachfront; in London's financial district; in a Leeds suburb right next to a shopping centre. As it is, however, it seems the regime will try anything and everything before addressing people's real concerns."