How Britain lost control
Everything is broken. Nothing changes. Voters are mad as hell
Good morning. This is Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor of the New Statesman.
HMO Britain is snowballing from a tale of certain postcodes into a national story. Last year brought 82,100 applications for asylum in the UK – slightly lower than in 2024, but still the third highest total on record. The world is unstable, on the move, and the British state is an unfit host: failing to build homes at a rate fast enough for its citizens, let alone the newcomers desperate to reach its shores.
Meanwhile, landlords of Serco properties I’ve spoken to have described the contracts as a dream ticket; one with HMOs in Norfolk called the company “the fairy godmother”. They are paid guaranteed rent and maintenance costs with “none of the aggro” and “none of the bureaucracy” that an ordinary let brings, according to another with 30 Serco-run properties across the north-west.
For this week’s magazine, I reported on the shortcomings of the Serco state – and how Britain lost control. Read the full article here.
The NS is only available to paying subscribers at the moment. But you can take out a subscription here, with thanks to those who already have.
Have a great day. Thank you.
Re: the Henry Nowak atrocity ... On some very important social/societal matters, too much media have gone far beyond simply being biased. They simply have corrupted themselves.
While racism and racial discrimination need to be challenged in their entirety, especially racially motivated violent acts, there are injustices and victimizations that get mis-reported or ignored as though those injustices/victimizations are ideologically and therefore socially/politically acceptable.
The media (i.e. news, non-fiction literary, social and entertainment), though especially the 'woke' mainstream news outlets, can largely be credited for the creation and maintenance of current societal/institutional racial standards and even hypocrisies in Western society.
Anti-Caucasian racism or violence, for example, can be expected to not receive objective coverage, if any at all, by the neo-liberal news media, quite unlike when the racial makeup is reversed. It's likely they deem such occurrences, however newsworthy, as not being a social/societal problem and therefore un-worthy of proper coverage.
Over my decades of news consumption, I’ve heard this justification more than once, although it’s not even their professional/objective prerogative to do so in the first place. They also appear to (erroneously) believe they can be both journalistically activistic AND truly objective/professional.
According to my journalism instructor approximately three decades ago, the probable rarity of such an assault (in this case, anti-Caucasian racism or violence) would make it newsworthy; and the opposite would apply to the common or usual occurrence, such as that resulting from a recurring social/societal problem.
Also, all the more disturbing and concerning about that news media’s failure to condemn or even properly cover such racist assaults is that it encourages the justice system to not objectively/fully charge and prosecute those responsible.
Not only can the racists (of color) not be held properly criminally accountable, they may also notice the news outlets downplaying or omitting the racial motivation behind such serious crimes, perhaps leaving the impression that the inexcusably vicious acts were somehow morally justified. It’s in our flawed, if not corrupted, human nature (especially as children) to observe such societal cues and take advantage of them.
Yet, the mainstream news-media's distortion and diversion continues.
And there still are reporters and editors who will (as though with big innocent fawn-like eyes) reply to accusations of subjective or compromised journalism with: ‘Who, me? I’m just the messenger.’ ... The news media are not ‘just the messenger’; nor are they but a reflection of the community — or their consumer base, for that matter — in which they circulate.
Maybe compromised journalism has become normalized, along with ethical standards gradually lowering (perhaps with a lowering of moral standards?). Although news-media bias is a form of corruption, it's deemed acceptable from within — perhaps because it has been around for a very long time and everybody's doing it.
What astonishes me, though, is how such news-media professionals can afterwards sleep at night or look their little children/grandchildren in the face everyday?
Governments can properly regulate immigration or voters will toss those politicians out. That's simply the mood in the West this decade.
Mette Frederiksen may have lost ground in the recent Danish election. But she's now leading a more left-leaning coalition than the previous one. If there's any hope for Labour, they should start thinking "it's better like Mette".
There need to be rational restrictions on new immigration while protecting the rights of those who are living productive lives in Western countries. If immigration is perceived as spiraling out of control, you'll simply end up with countries run by Reform, the AfD, and MAGA. Preventing unauthorized immigrants from arriving in the first place is the least fraught solution.