Dreading The Weekend

The Prime Minister and Cabinet are dreading this weekend. Why so, and how do we know?
 Because they keep on telling us, not least via endless references to a summer of discontent brought to us through the fake news media. And why? Because of the recent protests at hotel/hostels over the issue of mass, uncontrolled, unlimited, and in many cases illegal immigration. The usual bedwetters were out in force on Tuesday evening’s BBC Newsnight programme. They gave us an insight into the mindset of the London political bubble and their weapons and tactics (or their lack of) as a turbulent month is upon us. Last year saw such unrest following a series of disturbing and violent incidents (Gillingham, Bristol, Manchester Airport, Leeds) involving immigrants.

Public frustration reached boiling point after the tragic murders of three young girls at a Southport dance class, committed by radicalised Rwandan Axel Rudakubana. The mentality of the elite, and the Home Office guidelines they are forced to follow, was evident on the Newsnight programme. 
Hosted by Matt Chorley, the show was subtitled ‘Government braced for asylum protests, on the day of the launch of the Government’s one in, one out asylum project’. Regarding the latter, touring the studios earlier in the day, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refused to say how many illegals would be sent back. The subtext being that the establishment in London continues to be committed to mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration.

On X, Andrew Neil explained,

‘Under the Anglo-French one-in-one-out migrant deal, which is more like 20 in, one out, the UK will pay not just the cost of transporting small boat migrants back to France but also pay to bring those asylum seekers deemed to have a greater chance of success across the Channel from France.

All that on top of the hundreds of millions London pays Paris to beef police presence on the coast around Calais.’

Last weekend’s protests included a well-attended Britain First march in Manchester and various gatherings outside the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf (including one by pink-shirted ladies disrupted by central casting agents provocateurs with smoke flares). Chastened, Matt Chorley presented Newsnight guests Liam Thorp, Political Editor of the Liverpool Echo, former Conservative Special Adviser Anita Boateng, and Political Correspondent Joe Pike. Pike began by saying that, according to social media posts, at least 14 events would take place later this week at what he is obliged to call ‘asylum hotels.’
These are on ‘the Home Office’s radar’. Pike explained ‘Evette Cooper’s team are telling me she has been kept up to date and is regularly in touch with the National Police Chiefs’ Council.’

Not because we have a country-wide force coordinated from London for a political purpose, but, says Pike, ‘Because it is up to chief constables to deal with [public order], not politicians.’ Number 10 and the Home Office and different parts of Whitehall are ‘nervous’ after what happened in the summer of 2024, with disorder resulting in 1,800 arrests and 1,100 people being charged. He continued that a combination of social media posts, the weather, and people being out of school led some in Government to be worried and nervous about what might happen. The conversation moved to the prison system with speculation in the last few hours that measures are underway to create extra space for immigration protest offenders as well as for a separate protest, a London march for Palestine.


The Ministry for Justice contradicts. Pike read from his notes, ‘It’s absolute nonsense to suggest extra work to make space is underway, no extra space has been made free.’ Perhaps because there isn’t any, as that same morning Dame Anne Owers reported upon the never-ending crisis within the system. The Chair asked of Liam Thorp, ‘What’s the situation on your patch in Liverpool?’ One wonders of Liam’s patch.


He doesn’t sound like a Scouser and graduated with an MA in Journalism at the University of Salford before joining the Bolton News.
 After two years, he moved to the sinking Liverpool Echo, whose circulation is 40% lower than three years ago, pushing daily sales down to a miserable 9,008. A plastic Paddy, Liam is a post-Brexit Irish citizen thanks to his maternal grandparents who prefers London to the North West. Besides his Newsnight appearance, last week he was on Sky News Press Preview alongside, in further evidence of the incestuous nature of the fake media bubble, tonight’s fellow NN guest Anita Boeteng.

Open-necked Liam began by telling us that the genesis of last summer’s trouble was with the stabbings at a Taylor Swift party in Southport. The violence moved to nearby Liverpool, where ‘fairly serious’ disorder broke out.
 ‘We haven’t had a lot of that this time, but there are regular protests outside a hotel in the Wirral.’ On the right of the screen, in a little box, the accompanying video was of a recent protest but nothing to do with Merseyside. It was the Jeremy Corbyn pro-immigration event outside a hotel in London’s Barbican. Captioned ‘Saturday’, but with no mention of London or which side the protesters were on, viewers may have been misled.

Back on the Wirral, Liam informed us at times it has been tense with a couple of arrests. A worry, as scenes from last summer were damaging, ‘You’ll remember we had a library burned down.’ What Liam didn’t mention was it was near a mosque, which the police were protecting. Thorp continued, ‘I think personally there’s a lot of people who have to do more to stop stoking the tensions. A lot of mainstream media and politicians are playing into this type of thing. We know the far right are organising heavily in these areas, we had that in Knowsley in 2023. Media commentators and mainstream politicians need to be a bit more wary of their language.’

What Thorp didn’t mention is that the violence at Knowsley’s Suites Hotel on Ribblers Lane happened after local girls were pestered by asylum seekers. Video showed an asylum seeker from the hotel asking a 15-year-old girl for her phone number while trying to touch her. 
Puffins will be pleased to read that then and now the directors of the Suites Hotel include: Geeta Bagga, Harmil Singh, and a Miss Jee Hwee Foo. Moving the conversation to Anita Boeteng, Matt Chorley informed viewers that Anita grew up right next door to another immigration protest hotspot at Epping. Did she? Ms Boeteng claims she comes from Hackney. Her father was a bus driver, her mother a cleaner.

Through her previous appearances on BBC Question Time, Puffins are already aware Ms Boateng defines as Ghanaian, with, in reality, her parents being successful business people resident in the West African country. The reference to ‘near Epping’ refers to Redbridge, where she attended a selective grammar school before studying PPE at Oxford.
 Not her real name (Anita Boakye-Boateng), she estimated there are about 200 such hotels; therefore, a lot of constituencies, and a lot of constituency MPs that Anita speaks, to have experienced an asylum hotel ‘popping up’. ‘The asylum seekers are not able to work, therefore they hang around town centres, as you’d expect.’ This creates somewhat of a different atmosphere for locals. Liam mentioned the ‘extreme forces’ coming in – another reference to the extreme hard ultra far right – but also that a lot of the concern comes from ‘ordinary residents’ cworried by ‘some of the stories’ they may have seen.


By this, Chorley means the unmentionable rape and sexual assaults carried out on local girls by illegal immigrants.
‘There’s no debate or consent,’ Anita explained, ‘the Home Office has to find them places and it isn’t down to agreement.’ Dissatisfaction within communities follows. ‘Because they’re concentrated, they have an impact,’ interrupted Chorley, again avoiding any mention of assaults on girls.

In a video clip, Matthew Collins was introduced to viewers and described as a former senior member of the National Front who is now a part of Hope Not Hate. A group which campaigns against ‘far right extremists’, explained the host, without mentioning HnH is a shell organisation used as a brand name for disseminating Home Office propaganda. 
In a one-minute-and-thirty-second contribution, Mr Collins managed to say ‘far right’ and ‘extreme far right’ six times. Individuals and groups, according to himself, are emerging who haven’t been seen for some time. After referencing those who were demonstrating in solidarity with those in limbo in the illegal immigrant hotels, Collins went off-message.

Summoning his inner National Front, he referenced the failure of both this and the previous government to tackle the problem, asked why the French weren’t doing more, and wondered aloud what our actual obligations are. At which point he had to be cut off. Chorley spoke for him; Matthew Collins says the far right have seized this moment. How worried should we be?
 ‘We’ve had bigger problems with the far right in the past,’ responded Anita. ‘The BNP were a big threat in Barking, which isn’t too far away from the part of London being discussed.’ This is not new, but what worried Anita was the nature of the conversations which are taking place.

They are ‘online in large part with a lot of people spreading misinformation and disinformation, that is readily believed [via social media].’‘We have young people, especially young men, getting information from sources we cannot challenge and cannot discredit because we don’t know about it.’ Misinformation spread into the community last year and caused unrest. 
Speaking of Barking, according to the census, after the vile Margaret Hodge beat the BNP’s Nick Griffin in the 2010 general election, the white British population fell from 58% to 44% by 2021. In 1991, it was 93%. According to a recent school census, 152 languages are spoken in Barking and Dagenham’s schools.

Liam agreed. ‘I don’t know if you have opened X recently, but it’s alarming.’ What Liam labelled as ‘extreme racism’ plays out every day. 
Saturday’s Britain First march in Manchester appeared on the screen as the BBC clankingly tried to associate extreme racism with the Union Jack and the Cross of St George. 
At almost the same moment, Elon Musk was coincidentally re-tweeting a message telling us, ‘X is the most used news app in the UK. X is three times more preferred than mainstream media.’
 Liam called again upon people who are in the mainstream, which he explained to be Conservative MPs and political commentators. Articles in the MSM claim Britain is about to blow. It’s like they want it to happen. Everyone needs to dial the language down. ‘We are dealing with extremism here.’ Pointing to one side, as if aware of Britain First being in the video clip box, he continued, ‘The far right are openly on our streets, something which used to be the case more to the fringes of society.’

Chorley moved to Jo Pike and some new polling about public perceptions. Matt put up a YouGov graphic captioned ‘Do you think there are more immigrants staying in the UK legally or illegally?’ Looking at the figures, he told us what to add up – 47% responded most immigrants are illegal. It’s not the case. At the census, 10 million were foreign-born with ‘only’ between 120,000 and 1.3 million being illegal. The public, he concluded, has strong opinions but not a strong grip on reality.


The chair pointed out Anita was in ‘Comms’ during the last government. What would her advice be? The public has a view that is not matched by the facts, he continued. Do you tell the public they’re wrong? How do you address an issue which isn’t (according to the London bubble) as serious as they think?

After university and a stint in Ghana, Ms Boateng became a researcher at Policy Research Unit and a ‘political producer’ for our very own Question Time. After three years in the job, she moved even further up the Westminster media-political rectum via a bewildering blizzard of special adviser posts.


These days she is a partner in Portland Communications, a shadowy advocacy group that promises ‘communications and public affairs advice to brands and high-profile individuals’. Founded by Blair protégé Tim Bell, Portland claims experience across ‘the political world and global institutions spanning Downing Street and Whitehall to the UN’, while having access to a ‘roster of editors.’ 
A full QT Review biography of Miss Boeteng can be found here.

Anita would do the exact opposite of what the government have been doing.
 Liam mentions the Conservatives’ use of language. Some of the briefings coming from the government, including from Culture and Media Secretary Lisa Nandy, have included ‘it might blow’ type of language. Labour ministers have to prove they take the issue seriously while not wanting to talk about it. The government are in a tangle, saying tough things but not having solutions to match. That’s the government’s communications challenge.

As for that disconnect between the number of illegal immigrants statistically and the number perceived by the public, what the entitled London bubble is unable to comprehend is that the highest law of the land is the will of the people. It is up to ourselves, not the lying lawyers, journalists and politicians, to decide what is legal and what is not.
 The tensions created by the disconnected elite, highlighted by their commitment at all costs to mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration, will play out in the streets this dreaded weekend.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2025