Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

From black-clad agitators to an appeal for ‘Tommo’s Mum’: an unsettling week with the Patriot Platform

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A militaristic operation with features of influencer culture, the new anti-migrant movement seems to show a shift in tactics and rhetoric

Shortly after 7am last Saturday in the English coastal town of Dover, livestreamed footage distributed by Britain’s newest anti-migrant movement showed dozens of men in paramilitary outfits jumping out from the backs of vehicles, their faces covered beneath balaclavas, their hands in black gloves.

Within an hour, hundreds more masked agitators, dressed head to toe in black, some wearing silver crosses around their necks, were marching through the town’s streets, clapping and chanting “Stop the boats” and “Christ is king”, blockading the busy port for hours.

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RNLI reports ‘significant’ donations boost after being targeted by far right over small boats

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Charity condemns ‘disgraceful’ intimidation and insists it will continue core purpose of saving lives at sea

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has had a “significant” boost in donations since becoming a target of far-right agitators protesting over small boat crossings.

The charity’s staff and volunteers have been subjected to “online and physical abuse” after involvement in a rescue on Sunday in which a dingy carrying asylum seekers was brought into Portsmouth.

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Hundreds of asylum seekers removed from UK to France have disappeared, say NGOs

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Rights groups say those missing after being deported under one in, one out deal include dozens of age-disputed children

Hundreds of asylum seekers including at least 41 age-disputed children who were removed to France under the “one in, one out” deal have disappeared, human rights organisations have said.

The pilot scheme was hailed as “groundbreaking” by the former prime minister Keir Starmer when he and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced it in July 2025. Under a treaty drawn up for this agreement, it forcibly returns small-boat asylum seekers to France in exchange for others brought legally to the UK from France.

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Camden Green councillor says he will fight Polanski to run in Starmer’s seat – UK politics live

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Hamza Chowdhury says he will challenge party leader and has received nominations from other Green councillors

Healey says Andy Burnham set out in his statement to MPs last week what he thought had gone wrong

The fundamentals of our economy [were] hollowed out through a series of past policy decisions, political power was centralised, weakening the relationships between the people, the businesses and the institutions who can make things happen beyond Whitehall. The economic enablers were privatised and outsourced, leaving accountability to a thicket of arm’s length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy. And our country was deindustrialised as the cost to make anything, to build anything here soared, and our dependence on unreliable sources grew, including in areas critical to our national security and sovereignty.

Let me be clear, I recognise that the costs of business, its energy bills, regulation, burdens, planning constraints, labour costs, have grown since Covid and I want to draw the line.

And whether it is the cost of business or the cost of living, the only way we deal with these in the long term is growth.

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Black-clad Dover vigilantes will return if police do not act, say campaigners

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Far-right linked group able to mobilise at scale due to police ‘inaction’, says founder of Hope Not Hate

The group of masked, black-clad vigilantes who blockaded roads in Dover could repeat the disruption unless police step up efforts to stop them, politicians and campaigners have said.

Responsibility for the demonstration has been claimed by Patriot Platform, an anti-immigration group with links to the far right, which styles itself as having a “fierce love for our homeland”.

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Gaza refugee says sister-in-law ‘would be alive’ if Home Office had let her come to UK

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Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, says Home Office refused visa application despite Maryam having cancer

A man living in the UK has said he believes his sister-in-law who died from cancer in Gaza would still be alive today if the Home Office had agreed to bring her and her family to Britain.

Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, fled Gaza in 2020 and was granted refugee status in the UK in 2021. After the destruction of large areas of Gaza by Israeli forces following the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, he applied to bring his brother Hassan, Hassan’s wife, Maryam, their two young children and other family members to the UK in October 2025. He said the Home Office rejected their application.

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Labour condemns Reform’s plan for £100bn in cuts as ‘half-baked’ and ‘incredibly reckless’ – UK politics live

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Labour chair says uch cuts ‘could mean vital public services like hospitals, schools and law enforcement are put at risk’

The Electoral Commission has released political donation figures for the second quarter of 2026. They show that Reform UK continues to rake in far more than other parties. Nigel Farage’’s party had declared donations worth £5.3m. Labour got £3.6m, and the Conservatives £2.8m.

Most of Reform UK’s money came from Ben Delo, who gave £4m. As Rowena Mason reported earlier this year, Delo is a British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business.

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Burnham promises to bring ‘substantial change’ as he gives first Commons address as prime minister – UK politics live

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PM says he has a ‘clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong’ with UK, and pays tribute to Keir Starmer after his predecessor quit parliament

My colleague Richard Partington, the Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, grew up, like Andy Burnham, in the Warrington suburb of Culcheth. He has been home to find out what people there are saying about the new PM.

Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced a reshuffle, replacing Mel Stride with Andrew Griffith as shadow chancellor and Priti Patel with Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary.

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British family pleads with French authorities to release body of relative who died in Channel

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Jasmeet Wadhwa, who fled Taliban persecution in Afghanistan, lost his life while trying to reach UK in April

A British family is pleading with French authorities to release the body of a relative that officials have held for five months after he died in the Channel in April.

Jasmeet Wadhwa, 32, died while attempting to reach the UK on a dinghy on 1 April with his mother, Harbans Kaur Wadhwa, after they fled Taliban persecution in Afghanistan in January.

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French police accused of rising use of violence to stop Channel crossings

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NGO criticises ‘human cost’ of UK-funded crackdown on attempts to set off from French beaches in small boats

People trying to cross the Channel to the UK have reported an increase in French police use of violence on beaches to prevent them from getting into dinghies, according to a French NGO.

Utopia 56, which works on beaches from where migrants attempt Channel crossings, says so far this year 2,720 people have reported being victims of French police violence, compared with 1,954 over the same period last year, when crossings overall were much higher.

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Home Office could be blocked from deporting trafficking victims to Albania

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Many males are returned even if they have been trafficked but Home Office must now consider new legal guidance

The Home Office could be blocked from deporting many young male trafficking victims to Albania after a major court ruling.

Thousands of Albanian males have been identified as potential trafficking victims in the UK in recent years. Many are sent back to their country even if they are potential or confirmed victims of trafficking, as the Home Office contends they will be safe there.

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Footage shows clash with French police on beach as dinghy tries to leave for UK

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Film emerges as France says it has stopped 185 small boat ‘events’ in three months since new £660m deal with UK

Footage has captured the moment French police officers clashed with people on a beach in northern France as the authorities tried to intercept a dinghy attempting to reach the UK.

Men wearing lifejackets appear to throw objects at the police to try to keep them away from their dinghy. The officers then use Pava spray before slashing the inflatable boat with a knife.

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Albanian ambassador attacks UK right wing for ‘unhinged’ fixation with 2022 migrant surge

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Exclusive: Uran Ferizi says arrivals fell sharply after short-lived influx, but country continues to be stigmatised

The number of Albanians who travelled to Britain in small boats four years ago remains the focus of “unhinged” and “hysterical” criticisms from rightwing politicians and the media, according to the country’s UK ambassador.

Uran Ferizi said the influx of more than 12,000 people from the Balkan state in 2022 was “real”, “exceptional” and “short-lived”, but the Albanian community in the UK was still being framed by those events by Reform UK and the Daily Telegraph.

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Nearly 100 children detained as adults under UK-France migration deal

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Figures emerge in critical letter to Home Office from organisation appointed to scrutinise detention facilities

Nearly 100 children have been wrongly identified and detained as adults under Shabana Mahmood’s “one in, one out” deal with France, the Guardian can disclose.

Home Office staff said that of 304 age-disputed cases arising from the scheme over nine months, 94 (31%) – were ultimately found to be minors. Children are supposed to be excluded from the scheme, while government policy limits immigration detention of unaccompanied children to 24 hours.

Had been awaiting deportation for more than six months, despite being supposed be held for up to 28 days only “in exceptional cases”.

Were being readied for removal to France despite having TB or requiring hospital treatment.

Faced removal after being separated from family members with whom they had travelled, which she said had a “particularly damaging impact”.

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Government could pay higher rents to spread asylum accommodation across UK

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Greater use of private rental properties would form part of PM’s plan to spread accommodation more evenly across UK

Ministers are considering paying higher prices for housing asylum seekers in private rental properties as part of Andy Burnham’s plan to spread accommodation more evenly across the country.

Using more private rental accommodation, known as “dispersal”, as well as former military barracks, is cheaper than expensive hotels for asylum seekers.

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Thursday briefing: What happens after an asylum hotel closes?

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In today’s newsletter: With more sites closed and more lives upended, a look at the rhetoric and reality of where asylum seekers should be housed

Good morning. This week, immigration minister Anna Turley announced, with minor fanfare, the government will stop using a further 13 hotels to house asylum seekers across the country.

It brings the total shut this year to 44, in pursuit of Labour’s manifesto pledge, now reiterated by Andy Burnham, to cease hotel use completely by the end of this parliament. Doing so would remove what have become highly visible symbols of an increasingly toxic debate about migration. Less than 160 to go, according to the Home Office.

Solar eclipse | Wednesday’s eclipse began in Russia’s remote Arctic north, going on to trace an arc over much of western Europe. From the UK to northern Italy, tens of millions of people turned to the sky as the light of the setting sun was almost completely blocked out.

UK news | Nurses are collapsing during shifts amid “inhumane and impossible” conditions caused by extreme heat, their union has warned, as Andy Burnham promised to grapple with “the bigger questions” of climate adaptation.

US politics | Karoline Leavitt will step down as White House press secretary at the end of August, Donald Trump announced.

Science | Astronomers claim to have discovered a new kind of cosmic object, a black hole “star”, which is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light.

Middle East | Israeli militants have besieged two Palestinian families in their homes since the weekend, aiming to take over their properties in the West Bank village of Qusra through a campaign of terror.

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Immigration minister says poorer areas have taken ‘fair share’ of asylum seekers – UK politics live

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Anna Turley backs up Andy Burnham’s suggestion that affluent areas should house more asylum seekers in future

Just 20 staff are working on climate adaptation within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the part of government tasked with protecting the environment and maintaining food security, a freedom of information request has revealed. Sandra Laville has the story.

On his visit to Stevenage, Andy Burnham also said he would visit the town on Remembrance Day to mark its 80th birthday.

I’m going to come back to Stevenage on 11 November. We will pay our respects for Remembrance Day around that time, but I’ll be here because if I’m right, that will be 80 years to the day that the post-war Labour government created the first new town right here in Stevenage.

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Thetford residents remain on edge after days of ‘mob rule’ over asylum plans

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People voice frustration with officials’ failure to engage with community over placement of asylum seekers in area

A smashed window pane and some broken eggshells on a footpath were some of the tell-tale signs of events that took place this week on a residential street at the edge of Thetford.

On Friday afternoon it was not hard to find local people with a sense of foreboding after the latest disorder in the Norfolk market town which has seen crowds attempt to break into properties believed to be housing asylum seekers.

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French officers halted small boats at sea 10 times since spring

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Disclosure challenges Conservative and Reform claims that police are refusing to intervene

The French authorities have halted small boats at sea in the Channel on 10 occasions since the spring, officials said on Friday.

Despite claims from the Conservatives and Reform that the French were refusing to intervene in small boat crossings, maritime prefect officers were using “intervention tactics” to board or control vessels at sea and take asylum seekers back to France.

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Nearly 50 asylum seekers deported under ‘one in one out’ scheme have returned to the UK

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Figure raises questions about deal with France despite UK ministers insisting repeat arrivals will be removed

Almost 50 asylum seekers deported using the “one in one out” scheme have been recorded as returning to the UK a second time, the Guardian has learned.

In addition to the returnees detained by the Home Office, an unknown number are believed to have arrived in the UK undetected.

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