Labour's 'grotesque priorities' over our asylum system

Newly announced border action is being taken due to reported student visa abuse

- Esther Krakue

Newly announced border action is being taken due to reported student visa abuse

HOME Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s decision to slam the brakes on student visas from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Sudan is one of those increasingly rare moments in politics when Labour acknowledges reality.

If large numbers of people are using legal routes as a backdoor into the asylum system, any serious government should act. The absurd part is that this has taken so long, and that even now it still feels like a partial, reluctant gesture from a party that can’t bring itself to have an honest conversation about immigration, social cohesion and the damage this has done to ordinary working people.

Because that is the real issue here. Not just numbers on a spreadsheet, but the complete refusal of Britain’s ruling class to admit who pays the price for mass migration and a failing asylum system.

It is not the people in fashionable parts of London with soaring house prices, private schools and no competition for a GP appointment. It is the working class, who live with added pressure on housing, wages, schools, public services and community cohesion, and are then insulted as backward or bigoted for noticing what is right in front of them.