QUENTIN LETTS: We keep hearing the Tories are tanking. But their tails were high in the Commons
Save our sausages. Tom Hunt (Ipswich) was one of the horde of Conservative MPs cheering the Home Office’s announcement that it will start reducing the number of regional hotels housing asylum seekers.
At last, said Mr Hunt, the Novotel in Ipswich will be able to return to public use. ‘This is about fairness. When a number of my constituents who are struggling to pay their energy bills, struggling to put food on the table, can see migrants at a four star hotel – and they’re all men – going to their buffet every day and not paying a penny, it strikes at the heart of that fairness.’
For years I have listened to parliamentarians discussing immigration concerns and the language has been boringly procedural and euphemistic.
No one has ever mentioned hot buffet-breakfast envy. Maybe they should have done. Nothing so pricks the British voter’s indignation as the thought that someone might be getting his snorkers.
We keep being told the Tories are tanking and Sir Keir Starmer will be the next prime minister. Maybe. Yet for the hour of this hotels statement by Robert Jenrick, immigration minister, positions were reversed.
Conservatives’ tails were high as they pressed Mr Jenrick to keep going. There were just eight Labour backbenchers in attendance. The rest did not wish to hear Mr Jenrick claim that efforts to stop the small boats were finally working.
Robert Jenrick told MPs that the first 50 contracts for accommodation would be ‘exited’ by the end of January with a focus on putting them up in cheaper locations like motels, former military bases and floating barges.
The Novotel in Ipswich (pictured) will be able to return to public use much to the delight of the area’s Tory MP Tom Hunt
Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s spokesman, spoke for as short a time as he reasonably could. What little he had to say for himself was greeted with honks of derision from the Tory side.
Mr Kinnock’s chief claim was that the small boat numbers had reduced because it had been the wettest summer since 1912.
Natalie Elphicke (Con, Dover) protested that this was rubbish. Why, the sun had actually been seen in Dover this summer, she insisted. Cue widespread disbelief around the house.
Mr Jenrick dismissed Mr Kinnock as ‘the Michael Fish of British politics’. Does that make Mr Fish the Stephen Kinnock of British weather-forecasting? If so, is it actionable?
‘A day for celebration,’ was the reaction of even the moderate Damian Green (Con, Ashford) to Mr Jenrick’s announcement. ‘Real progress,’ said Philip Hollobone (Con, Kettering), normally miserly with his praise. ‘Immense progress,’ thought Matt Warman, the voice of Skegness. You might expect the MP for such a bracing seaside resort to be strappingly bronzé but Mr Warman is an unashamedly nerdy specimen.
He and other MPs from all parties have, however, been through the mincer on this issue.
Sir George Howarth (Lab, Knowsley) begged the minister to stop sending migrants to a hotel in his constituency where there was violent unrest. Mr Jenrick agreed. Siobhan Baillie (Con, Stroud) urged Labour to stop playing political games on immigration because in some constituencies the police and local MP had ‘worked really hard to keep incidents out of the newspapers so as not to escalate situations’.
A group of people thought to be migrants crossing the Channel in a small boat traveling from the coast of France and heading in the direction of Dover, Kent on August 29
The Stoke contingent were in fine voice as they celebrated Mr Jenrick’s announcement that the North Stafford hotel will no longer be filled with asylum seekers. ‘Labour wants us to be dumping ground,’ bellowed Jonathan Gullis (Con, Stoke North). ‘Stoke has done its fair share!’
Some years ago, when reviewing a play nearby, I spent a night at the North Stafford hotel. One can only conclude that the asylum seekers are made of strong stuff.
Not everyone on the Conservative side was happy, though. Maggie Throup (Con, Erewash) demanded to know from Mr Jenrick if a hotel in her patch was going to become migrant-free, ‘and if he can’t give me that good news, why not?’.
Mr Jenrick was indeed unable to oblige and looked a little chastened. Ms Throup is the one who looks and sounds like Brian the snail from television’s Magic Roundabout. Savaged by a snail!
In France they eat snails. We Brits prefer sausages.
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