The People’s Republic of Britain: How Compassion Became a Crime

When the delicate sensibilities of Israel were apparently offended by protests against its genocidal actions, the British establishment sprang to its defence with the zeal of a colonial viceroy protecting imperial interests. The government’s response was not diplomacy or dialogue—it was prohibition. In a legislative sleight of hand, a protest group, Free Palestine, was banned by act of Parliament.

The ban was so sweeping that Britain could justly be renamed the People’s Republic of Britain. Respectable citizens found themselves arrested and jailed for exercising the most fundamental democratic right: the right to protest.

Contrast that with the far-right mobs who regularly protest against lawful asylum seekers. There, the right to protest suddenly becomes sacrosanct—almost holy. Not a single minister murmurs about restrictions or bans. It is, apparently, one law for those who wave the Union Jack and another for those who wave a Palestinian flag.

The popular caricature of asylum seekers has been allowed to ferment unchecked. According to pub wisdom and tabloid gospel, these foreigners arrive on dinghies and are immediately chauffeured to five-star hotels like the Ritz, served croissants and tea while British staff do their laundry. The reality? If the so-called “hotels” were described as such in any trade description, the owners would be in court. They are hostels—crammed, impersonal, and grim. Bunk beds, no privacy, and staff who operate more like wardens than hosts.

But it wasn’t always this way. Before the Tories discovered the political goldmine of vilifying refugees, asylum seekers were relatively few in number. Britain’s island geography naturally limited arrivals. Most refugees fled to mainland Europe—Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey bore the brunt of global displacement. Britain was insulated by what might be called a legal curtain: the EU’s Dublin Convention, which required asylum seekers to claim refuge in the first safe country they entered—usually not Britain.

Those who did make it to British soil, often by air, were quietly placed within communities, in private housing. There were no visible “refugee ghettos” to feed public paranoia.

Then came Brexit—the great unravelling. The legal curtain was torn down, and the English Channel, once a moat of indifference, became a contested frontier. Then Covid struck, and the perfect storm brewed. Public health rules required that asylum seekers be isolated, so the government repurposed empty hotels.

And thus began one of the most cynical political manoeuvres of modern Britain: turning the desperate into scapegoats. The Tory spin machine went into overdrive, suggesting that Britain’s cost-of-living crisis was somehow the fault of penniless refugees eating imaginary croissants in imaginary hotels.

Rather than restore the previous, workable system, the government doubled down. “Just stop the boats,” they cried, as if shouting slogans across the Channel would solve the problem. Those who did make it across would be deported—to Rwanda or wherever else would take them—an echo of Britain’s eighteenth-century practice of shipping undesirables to the colonies.

It’s all theatre, of course. A cruel pantomime for political survival. As Emperor Haile Selassie told the inaugural UN conference, “Until all humans are treated equally, there will be no peace.”

The great irony is that many of the decision-makers driving this cruelty are themselves descendants of refugees and immigrants—now busy pulling up the drawbridge they once crossed. And the public? Too many wallow in the comfort of ignorance, choosing prejudice over perspective, and anger over empathy.

Britain’s moral compass hasn’t just spun—it’s been sold on eBay.