Britain editor, New Statesman. Lead host, New Statesman Podcast (Publisher Podcast Award winner '21-24) & co-host Westminster Reimagined with Armando Iannucci.
Anoosh Chakelian
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My cover story - something I've been working on since last summer - on the shadow state, a country trapped in an outsourced asylum (and everything else) system it created for itself:
- Landlords rejoiced at juicy deals to house asylum seekers, and shrugged at kicking existing tenants out
- Locals despaired at overcrowding; their streets being "quadrupled" with no consultation
- In one HMO, asylum seekers showed me their year-long broken toilet. Others had rats and leaks
- Local MP and cabinet sec Lisa Nandy told me it's “among the worst companies I’ve had to deal with”, accusing it of a “a deliberate strategy” not to consult the community
- BUT with councils reluctant to do it in-house, Serco "too big to fail", and the asylum appeals backlog, who could fix it?
- During a 2nd consecutive summer of rioting outside hotels last year, I'm told senior Serco bosses discussed at a private meeting the pressure from the far right and Home Office to spend less on asylum housing.
- The poor state of some of the HMOs was also raised at the company's AGM this year
Far from local, this civil unrest is symbiotic. Tommy Robinson from Luton encourages men from Belfast to “not make peace with evil.” Great piece by @finnmcredmond.bsky.social:
- Even Andy Burnham - who has repeatedly criticised this system - has stopped short of calling for bringing it under public control.
- He's said he hasn't "proposed directly that local authorities should take control" and will only call for "reform of these Home Office contracts".
- Serco sources spoke of the hotels being "horrible" - but “that’s what the government wants, they don’t want to pay us to make them nicer.”
- Shareholders at its AGM celebrated a "good year" for growth: asylum accommodation contracts used to lose Serco money; no longer, since asylum numbers rose
There's no easy way to house asylum seekers, or anybody else, in a country with a severe housing shortage.
The best way to fix this problem is to build a lot more housing - because that will drive down prices regardless of whether we rent from government, charities or the private sector.
I love Anoosh's journalism. I love even more that the illustration is a ferret-shaped lion being choked for some reason.
The towns and villages of Wigan and Makerfield are the epicentre of HMO Britain. Wigan had some of the first asylum hotels, and now hundreds of HMOs. And the issue is coming up "all the time" for the Labour Party on the campaign trail.
Read @anooshc.bsky.social's cover story:
Everything is broken. Nothing changes. Voters are mad as hell
My cover story - something I've been working on since last summer - on the shadow state, a country trapped in an outsourced asylum (and everything else) system it created for itself:
My cover story - something I've been working on since last summer - on the shadow state, a country trapped in an outsourced asylum (and everything else) system it created for itself:
Everything is broken. Nothing changes. Voters are mad as hell
