Will our shambolic asylum system spark a populist revolt?

The Clapham acid attack demands that an official inquiry be commissioned into the phenomenon of asylum seekers converting to Christianity

Photo: Metropolitan police

Another week, another asylum scandal. This time, it’s the suspect in the horrific Clapham acid attack, which saw a mother and her two children hospitalised with burn injuries (which, in the case of the mother, are said to be ‘life-changing’).

We have learned in recent days some pretty disturbing facts about the man – Abdul Shokoor Ezedi – who is being hunted by police.

Ezedi left Afghanistan in 2016, arriving on these shores in the back of a lorry. His asylum application was rejected by the Home Office later that year.

Ezedi then made a second application. This time he claimed that he had converted to Christianity, meaning that he might be at risk if he were sent back to his home country. But this application, too, was rejected.

If Ezedi’s backstory were not dubious enough on these facts alone, there is also the small matter of his conviction in 2018 for sexual assault and exposure. The Daily Telegraph has reported that Ezedi was handed suspended jail sentences at Newcastle crown court for grabbing a woman’s buttocks and exposing himself at a bus stop.

Ezedi then appealed against the rejection of his second application and, in 2020, a tribunal found in his favour and granted him leave to remain in the country. It appears that Ezedi found a church witness to corroborate the story of his ‘conversion’.

And then the Clapham incident happened.  

The surprise is that anyone should be surprised. For around a quarter of a century, Britain’s immigration and asylum system has been a complete basket case. In fact, the apparent inability of any government to ensure that our borders are properly policed and asylum claims are dealt with swiftly, rigorously and competently has been a major contributory factor to the acute disconnect that now exists between the British political class and millions of ordinary voters.

I am certain that, for the most part, voters across this nation are tolerant and compassionate. Most are pro-immigration, but they want numbers to be kept modest and manageable so as to ensure that important things like wage levels and community cohesion are not compromised. And while most understand very well that a civilised country should hold out its hand to people fleeing persecution and war, they also believe that a distinction should be drawn between genuine refugees and economic migrants. So when they see thousands of young men arriving here every year on small boats from France (one of the safest and most civilised nations on the planet) and then claiming asylum, they question whether their tolerance and compassion is being taken advantage of. 

Yet the sneering liberals and progressives who are so influential in our national debate prefer to paint the whole subject of immigration in primary colours. So they will dismiss as racist or bigoted anyone who makes the case for strong border controls while portraying people like themselves, who invariably believe in open borders, as the intelligent and enlightened ones.

This patronising attitude has been on display even in the debate over the Clapham attack, with a stream of worthy politicians and commentators lining up to argue that we, the reactionary masses, are wrong to focus on the suspect’s asylum status, because that really isn’t the main issue. Instead, they tell us, the main issue is the wider problem of misogyny and male microaggressions in society. Which is surely a bit like saying to someone whose female loved one has been attacked by an escaped prisoner that he or she should concentrate on the wider issue of violence against women rather than the fact that the assailant, you know, managed to break out of prison.

Such disingenuous arguments serve only to insult the intelligence of ordinary voters and widen the chasm between them and the tone deaf chattering classes.

Relatedly, the Ezedi case surely demands that some sort of official inquiry is held into the phenomenon of asylum seekers converting to Christianity, and whether such conversions are undertaken insincerely and in an attempt to game the system. An inquiry of this kind should consider such questions as the rate of conversions among asylum seekers compared to that of the non-Christian population generally, post-conversion retention rates, and the impact of conversions on application decisions.

Such an inquiry should also call church leaders to testify. Already some evidence has emerged to suggest that church officials have been, if not complicit in rubber-stamping bogus conversions, then at least negligent in not spotting them. For example, as Melanie Phillips wrote in the Times earlier this week:

In 2016 the Rt Rev Pete Wilcox, then dean of [Liverpool’s Anglican] cathedral, said it had converted 200 asylum seekers in four years. Yet he couldn’t think of a single example where somebody who had already gained British citizenship converted from Islam to Christianity.

Did these statistics not trouble the Right Reverend and his colleagues in the Anglican diocese of Liverpool? Oughtn’t they to have flagged up the phenomenon to authorities?

The diocese was of course in the spotlight in 2021 after it emerged that the Syrian terrorist, Emad al-Swealmeen, who blew himself up outside Liverpool Women’s hospital had ‘converted’ to Christianity and attended services at the cathedral while his asylum application was being considered. (Both his original application and appeal were rejected but, to no-one’s surprise, it turned out that al-Swealmeen somehow managed to avoid deportation.)

Voters have every right to expect that their good faith is not abused. The tragedy now is that the utter failure of successive governments to manage the system effectively has made the whole issue of immigration a running sore in our national debate again. After the polarisation of the of the 1970s, when outfits like the National Front were on the march and Nazi-sympathising skinheads thought it was fine to intimidate anyone without Anglo-Saxon heritage, our country made considerable progress. Even then we were pretty awful at integrating new arrivals, but people felt broadly that the system was being managed competently and numbers were at reasonable levels. So, for a couple of decades, the topic of immigration slipped down the list of voters’ main concerns.

But with the emergence of the new global market and all that meant in the way of rapid and large-scale movements of labour, coupled with the Blair government’s adoption of liberal immigration policies, the issue began to raise its head again. And now, after years of systemic failure, it is back near the top of the list of voters’ priorities.

Politicians would be well-advised to recognise that what currently exists as a sort of smouldering discontent may escalate into a full-blown populist revolt, such as the type we have seen explode on the continent in recent times. I don’t predict it, but neither do I write it off, for I have not in my lifetime known a time like now when such a gulf exists between the priorities of the governors and those of the governed. Neither have I known a time when so many voters feel that their government is simply not in control of events.

Time and again in recent years – not least through the Brexit vote – the electorate has made it clear that it is not happy with the current high levels of immigration into the country. And time and again politicians have promised to fix the problem and then failed to do so. Worse, the numbers have grown ever larger.  

At the end of the day, democracy is like a pressure relief valve. Uprisings occur when that valve is shut off, or voters perceive that it has become defective.

The patience of British voters over the issues of asylum and immigration has been stretched beyond breaking point. There can be little doubt that if, as the polls suggested, the Tories are wiped out at the next election, it will be in no small measure due to their catastrophic failure to properly control the nation’s borders.

And, for that, their annihilation would be fully deserved.

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I appeared in my regular slot as a panellist on GB News’s Dewbs & Co last Friday. The programme can be watched again here.

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