Why the Epping decision matters

A remarkable victory for the people over the establishment

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Protestors outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, 2025

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It doesn’t happen very often but sometimes the people triumph over the establishment.

And that is exactly what happened yesterday afternoon, when a judge ruled that the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which has been used to house illegal migrants and asylum-seekers, can no longer do so.

While the official reason for the decision was arcane planning laws, with the local council claiming the hotel was no longer being used for its original purpose, the reality is it was the people, by peacefully protesting, who forced officials to act.

And so, the decision is not only highly significant for British politics but has far-reaching implications for the Labour government, for the protests that are still sweeping through the country, and for the future of migration and asylum policy.

In the first instance, as I wrote on X last night, as you read this every local council up and down the country will currently be exploring whether they, too, can copy the Epping template, using planning laws and other mechanisms to shut down the migrant hotels that have become a focus of public protests.

Meanwhile, the message that is going out to the British people today, loud and clear, is that if they, too, organise and join protests against migrant hotels in their local communities then, chances are, they too will emerge triumphant against a ruling class and a state that appears completely deaf to the concerns of its own people.

The rapidly rising number of protests over the decision to house illegal migrants in the heart of Britain’s communities —some of whom have gone on to commit truly horrendous sexual offences— had already come to symbolise the enormous gulf between a fanatically pro-immigration elite class and a people who feel outraged about how illegal migration is violating their borders and sense of fair play.

But now, after Epping, the people have every incentive to take to the streets, to protest, to try and make things happen for themsleves.

And while Labour Ministers and hapless civil servants might complain about all this, the reality, as I pointed to weeks ago, is that it is the Labour government’s incompetence and failing policies that have pushed the country to the edge.

The fact of the matter is that all this chaos and carnage was completely avoidable had Keir Starmer and his incompetent Home Secretary Yvette Cooper bothered to listen to people who know a thing or two about border security and immigration policy.

Even before Labour took power, as I wrote back in early 2024, experts were already pointing out how Labour’s policy of trying to “smash the gangs” while putting the illegal migrants and asylum-seekers who make it to Britain in luxury hotels would not only fail but make the illegal migration crisis ten times worse.

And that is exactly what’s happened.

The small boat numbers, under Labour, have soared to record levels, while the entire system, as we can now see, is in chaos. Public concern over immigration is rocketing and public trust in politicians and government to do the right thing is collapsing.

And, no, this isn’t only because the Tories, from Boris Johnson to Robert Jenrick, were just as hapless on this issue, which they were, having presided over the expansion of the asylum hotels to begin with.

It is because of how, instead of taking control, Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Labour promptly overturned the few good things the Tories left behind by decriminalising illegal migration and replacing deterrents with new incentives for many more migrants to break into the country.

Along the way, Labour allowed rapists, criminals, “alleged” Iranian terrorists, and ISIS-sympathisers into the country, putting them next to schools and families.

They put migrants in hotels and private housing amid one of the worst housing crises in British history. They handed the British people a bill of some £7-10 billion a year for the privilege of doing so, amid the worst cost-of-living crisis since World War Two.

And they even used the British people’s own money to offer illegal migrants more favourable rental contracts, outbidding the British people in their own housing market with their own money!

Labour, in short, has driven a tank straight through the British people’s sense of fairness, fuelling a rising tide of anger and alienation across the country.

Which leaves the total fiasco that we see around us today, with Yvette Cooper and Labour lawyers, astonishingly, even rushing in the final hours, yesterday, to try and oppose the court’s decision and prevent the people from taking back control of their own local communities.

Unsurprisingly, in the final hours, Labour lawyers claimed the decision would violate, you guessed it, their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Once again, in other words, foreign courts and conventions that were designed for an entirely different era are being cited as a reason why the Labour government could not prioritise the safety and security of its own citizens, alongside Labour’s fears that if the Epping hotel closed then the public might realise the efficacy of protesting.

Never in my lifetime, in short, have I seen a government that is so utterly adrift from the people on what is now, according to pollsters, the most important issue in Britain.

And, even today, Labour continues to gaslight and mislead the British people.

On the radio, this morning, I listened to a Labour politician claim the government “will bring down the number of asylum hotels” in the country, presenting this as some kind of serious response to public concern.

But what they mean by this, and what everybody needs to know, is all they will do is move the rapidly rising number of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants out of hotels like the one in Epping into things called HMOs --Housing for Multiple Occupancy--where dozens of migrants will be placed in terraced houses and buildings, once again, in the heart of Britain’s communities.

It seems highly likely, in other words, that the public protests that have been taking place outside the asylum hotels will now simply switch location to the HMOs.

Meanwhile, Labour is claiming it is “dealing with the issue” when, in reality, what it is doing is approving more than half of all asylum-claims, thereby incentivising more and more people to come, while simultaneously hiding the arrivals in private housing and the welfare state, hoping nobody in Britain will notice.

And so round and round we go, with the Labour government refusing to overturn this idiotic policy of de facto open borders, refusing to be honest with the British people, while the people themselves, understandably, become ever more frustrated, ever more angry, ever more disillusioned, with a government and system that is neither representing their views nor respecting them as tax-paying citizens.

None of this is sustainable. All it is doing is steadily turning up the temperature in this country, setting the stage for major protests, unrest, and perhaps even worse.

What we need to do to bring the entire situation under control —what even some liberal centrists such as The Economist are finally starting to realise about a decade after everybody else—is what this newsletter has argued for years.

We need to radically overhaul the legal and legislative regime that surrounds immigration and asylum in the West today.

We need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR. We need to radically reform if not fully replace the Human Rights Act. We need to revisit and reform the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. We need to immediately detain and deport anybody who arrives in Britain illegally, and process them offshore, away from the British people. And we need to have far more deterrents than incentives.

Until then, and I’ve never said this before, the British and the English people should apply what is the obvious lesson of Epping —they should continue to peacefully protest, they should continue to organise and mobilise, and they should continue to make their voice heard and unavoidable in the corridors of power.

Because, apparently, this incompetent and amateurish Labour government has absolutely no idea what it is doing anymore. And because, apparently, in Keir Starmer’s Britain, that’s the only way the people can reassert common sense.

Ever since Labour came to power, only a year ago, it has been pushing and pushing this country to the brink. So now, as Epping shows, it is time for the people to take back control but because clearly nobody in government is able to do so.

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