May 2020. We’re slowly adapting to social distancing and daily walks. I get a call from someone with whom I’d done volunteer work before this odd world of lockdown.

I’d been working with refugees and those seeking asylum for a few years. Everyone has their own reasons for what they choose to support. For me, a direct descendant of grandparents and father fleeing danger and oppression, helping displaced people seeking a place of safety was an obvious choice.

I was surprised to hear from my friend about a couple of local hotels that had been requisitioned by the Home Office to house people waiting to have asylum claims processed. This was new.  Conditions there, apparently, were OK. There was food and accommodation: basic clothing and cheap toiletries were provided. The bigger challenges, as we found out in the coming months – and years as it turned out – was crushing boredom and the dead hand of a glacial bureaucracy.

A few of us got together, having gathered donations of clothing and some games, toys, books, drawing materials and footballs – all things that might alleviate the tedium of indistinguishable days deadened by no prospect of work, study or entertainment. And all the time, the dispiriting wait for asylum claims to be assessed by a system that had all but ground to a halt.

In the five years since, more hotels – which were empty in a world where travel and recreation remained curtailed – were drawn into use. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve been into. As those of us who’ve used such places as airport stopovers know, they’re not luxurious: they’re comfortable enough, functional, and entirely soulless. Some – including those that have recently made the news – are located near shops and transport (not that you can get far on an allowance of £9.95 a week) – but many are on bleak ring-roads and the fringes of drab trading estates.

And here is the savage irony in this grim episode of this summer’s social history. Those cowering inside hotels and those protesting outside, want exactly the same thing. They don’t want to be there.

In those five years I have spoken to engineers, IT consultants, dentists and nurses, along with some very brilliant students and wonderful athletes. I’ve spoken to a tree-surgeon and physiotherapist; a graphic designer and any number of teachers; I’ve spent time with a journalist fearful for his life and a pair of car mechanics, either of whom looked capable of lifting an engine with their bare hands. They have all been united in their utter frustration at not being allowed to work and their bewilderment at a system that doesn’t seem to want to use their talents. (And, yes, in the interests of balance, there are, indeed, a few idlers who need a kick up the arse to get them going).

In the past couple of years, these people have attracted the unwanted attention of various protestors. And yet, those outside and inside the hotels are united in having been let down by the dishonesty and cowardice of our political class.

It’s true that Kier Starmer and Labour inherited a system that was in crisis – hence the use of hotels in the first place. But, as in all things, he and his party have lacked political will and political bravery. Instead of saying that in a population of 70 million, outstanding asylum claims of 50,000 were, indeed,  a concern but not one of the causes on people’s legitimate anger at the state’s failures, he and his colleagues quaked at the cheap populism of Farage and his fawning coterie of non-achieving no-marks.

Starmer made the decision to ‘talk tough’. He spoke of tackling gangs and islands of strangers, simply because 50,000 people were making claims to live and work here. Precedent would suggest that, at the very least, 30,000 of these claims would be legitimate. Just in case it sounds a lot, I’ll write it out with the zeros. 30,000 immigrants who, it turns out, won’t be ‘illegal’ at all, in a population of 70,000,000. How can they be the presiding problem of the age? Take a moment to compare  how comparatively few people make a claim to come to the UK.

Just say it out loud, Kier. The reason people have zero chance of getting a council house, can’t get a doctor’s appointment, find a dentist, get SEND provision for their kids, can’t rely on public transport, lose their disability benefit, don’t get a pay rise for three years, have no facilities for teenagers, don’t get their potholes fixed or hedges trimmed is not because one person in 2,300 has come from a war-torn, brutal regime. Why not just say that?

The answer is all too obvious. The notion that those who have plenty might be asked to contribute more to the public good – and so solve many of these problems – is a position that is as antithetical – and worrisome – to the current Labour Party as it is to most centrist governments around the world. So, when you can’t blame the real culprit, diverting blame to society’s weakest, most vulnerable and most insecure is a useful escape route.

None of which excuses the vile political opportunism of Nigel Farage, cosplaying as man of the people, from wickedly exploiting people’s legitimate fears and worries to trumpet his smug, golf-club racism. As for the openly fascist organisations playing the ‘save our women and girls’ card, the record of those arrested in last year’s riots rather speaks for itself when it comes to their view of acceptable conduct in their relationship with the opposite sex.

The next few weeks may well see a race to the bottom as this confederacy of dunces vent their anger towards asylum seekers. In the meantime, those whose profiteering and exploitation really ruin their lives will carry on as normal, attracting precisely zero opprobrium from leading politicians.

Those of us who first went into hotels to offer support and advice and resources five years ago, will now need to be outside, trying to persuade those being manipulated and misled, that their anger is misplaced. And we’ll ask them to look at how  those grinning grifters  purporting to represent them continue to laugh up their sleeves as they live the high life on the proceeds of their lies and provocations.