The Epping asylum hotel decision is a disaster for Yvette Cooper
August used to be set aside for the “silly season” and politicians could pause for a moment to catch their breath: not any more. Events do not take holidays.It has never been difficult to distinguish between Yvette Cooper and a ray of sunshine, but the High Court has presented the Home Secretary with a toxic parcel containing immigration, public protest and a publicity victory for Reform UK. Epping Forest District Council had sought an injunction to prevent migrants being housed at the Bell Hotel, the focus of recent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations over asylum and immigration policy.The Home Office asked the court to dismiss the council’s case, citing the potential impact on its ability to place migrants in hotel accommodation around the country, but was rebuffed. Mr Justice Eyre ruled that the Bell Hotel’s owners, Somani Hotels Limited, had not followed proper procedures in taking in migrants, and granted the council a temporary injunction under which they must be moved out of the hotel by 4pm on Friday 12 September.This is bad news for the Home Office and the government more generally on a number of levels. It puts immigration and asylum back in the headlines – not that they are ever far away now – and they are areas in which the government is struggling. The Labour Party is seen by many people as being on the wrong side of public opinion. It has failed abjectly to reduce the number of migrants crossing the English Channel illegally in small boats, and whether justified or not, the accusations of “two-tier justice” that arose at the time of last August’s riots will not go away.Presentationally, this is a blow because it has been the issue which Reform UK has made its own and on which it has built a great deal of support very rapidly. The party now consistently leads the opinion polls, albeit in a fragmented picture in which it is finding the support of less than a third of voters, and Nigel Farage has lost no time in claiming a “victory for parents and concerned residents of Epping”.“This community stood up bravely, despite being slandered as far right, and have won,” he said. “They represent the vast majority of decent people in this country.”Reform associated itself closely with the public protests at the Bell Hotel, and this is catnip to Farage. The timing could not be worse: Labour’s fear of Reform UK is palpable and can be gauged by the mounting viciousness with which ministers are attacking it and its leader.Read NextOn a practical level, the High Court’s ruling is ominous for the Home Office. Its barrister, Edward Brown KC, warned at the hearing that granting Epping Forest Council’s injunction could lead other local authorities to seek similar relief and “aggravate the pressures on the asylum estate”. That other councils will now go to court seems almost inevitable, and ministers and officials will already be bracing themselves for difficult and expensive problems of accommodation for those seeking to stay in Britain.One final issue lies over this like a corrosive veneer. Reduced to its bare bones, this can be seen as the government frustrated and unable to carry out its policies because of decisions made by judges. This is becoming a recurrent theme in public debate, the idea that we have created a hybrid judicial-parliamentary state in which “unaccountable” judges have the ability to stop the elected government from executing policy.Both the Conservative Party and Reform UK are seeing mileage in this critique, and it contains a substantial degree of truth. It is especially challenging for Sir Keir Starmer, as a former human rights lawyer and devotee of the judicial system. If it is a problem to be solved, Labour does not look like the party with a solution.A bad day at the Home Office, then. Today’s judgement represents a collection of sensitive issues which will, as they say in showbusiness, run and run.
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