Asylum seekers will be required to pay £10,000 towards the cost of their accommodation, in a move that signals the government’s hardening stance on immigration. The announcement comes as Labour leader Andy Burnham, fresh from an internal coup that sacrificed yet another failed leader, declared Westminster “broken” in a landmark devolution speech — language once reserved for Right-wing populists.
Burnham, who has secured his hold on Westminster, told the public the system is failing. His manifesto-by-proxy, The Productive State, argues that the public “ask now for only what is obvious: major, even fundamental changes in British society” to escape “the meanness and frustration of long years of stagnation and decline”. The paper warns that “Labour have hitherto not delivered on that demand. If that feeling does not change, the electoral consequences will be severe”.
“Asylum seekers will pay £10,000 towards accommodation as Burnham calls Westminster 'broken'.”
The decade since Brexit has been, for those wishing reform of Britain’s sclerotic institutions, a wasted one. Yet the years of permanent crisis have spurred rapid political evolution, leaving the country caught between the electorate’s desire for total change and Westminster’s inability to undertake reform. Winning an election, even by a landslide, is now no guarantee against total rejection by a British public in a volatile and revolutionary mood. Summer ethnic riots, once a generational shock, have become a routine problem of governance.
In consequence, Nigel Farage has evolved into the dominant figure in British political life, around whom all else revolves — in fear or expectation. The asylum seeker levy appears designed to address public anger over immigration, a key Farage rallying cry. But many who today celebrate Burnham’s coup were just as feverishly exultant two years ago over the coming Starmerite golden age.
Burnham, not shy of exaggerated displays of cultural Northernness, now faces the same impossible task: delivering change through a system he himself calls broken. Whether he proves a continuity figure or an agent of total change remains to be seen.