Editorial: Housing immigrants in hotels at taxpayer expense is appalling, but closing them is almost an irrelevance - the issue is the huge influx of migrants coming in the UK

We are months from the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote, yet one of its supposed benefits has not materialised.

Regaining control of the UK’s borders was one of the main reasons that supporters of the UK leaving the EU gave for their decision. But since then the loss of our borders has been almost total.

This is not in fact a consequence of Brexit, but rather of the Conservative government that was in power until 2024. The party that above all among the mainstream political movements should have paid heed to the cultural impact of mass migration was the one that gave way to economic and business demands for more labour. The party that should have reformed welfare radically to get people off benefits and into work instead took the easier path of importing workers.

And we lost many fine eastern European immigrants who worked hard and integrated into our society and have ended up with many immigrants from the third world or from countries with hard-line Islamic values that distrust, in some cases even despise, our western values.

But while the Tories are principally to blame for this disaster, Labour have somehow managed to make it even worse. However, we have a new tough-talking Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Any tightening of the borders is welcome, even if belated. But Ms Mahmood is saying that Britain should “never” have housed asylum seekers in hotels. She was speaking as the first migrants moved into a former military barracks in East Sussex. Yet locals are outraged that young men, often from radically different cultures, will now become a major population in their sleepy town of Crowborough.

It is an injustice for migrants to be housed in hotels at great expense to the nation but there are equal problems with putting them in camps or social housing. The core issue is the vast numbers that were allowed in, and are still coming in at a lower rate.