Keir Starmer’s ‘one-in, one-out’ policy always looked optimistic – but now it’s in total disarray. Just two illegal migrants have been sent back to France this week, though thousands continue to arrive here every month. Amid a mounting public backlash – and far too timid to take Donald Trump’s advice to deploy the Royal Navy to stop the boats – the Prime Minister is scrambling for alternatives.
Most people already know that the Government is billeting thousands of migrants in ‘houses of multiple occupancy’ (HMOs) up and down the country, while Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to place others in barracks on former military bases. This proposal was suggested recently by Reform UK, who I work with as a political consultant.
But now a third, more secretive move is underway: to house migrants in student accommodation.
A few days ago it emerged that the Home Office is planning to convert Mary Morris House in Leeds, a hall of residence with 247 bedrooms currently housing fee-paying students, into taxpayer-funded accommodation for illegal arrivals. In Aberdeen, some migrants from Iran, Somalia and Eritrea have been shifted from a Hilton hotel to two former student halls near the city centre – a move that sparked local protests this week.
And the idea isn’t even new: last year, the Tory government leased luxury student blocks in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire – complete with a cinema room and gym – into housing for almost 700 migrants. More than 150 students who signed tenancy agreements were thrown out a week before term began.
The Home Office had earmarked £358million to use the Huddersfield buildings until 2034, according to the National Audit Office (although the Government insists the actual cost was lower). In the meantime, despite the fact that taxpayers have spent a reported £7million leasing the blocks, the properties remain empty, with reports that a decision on moving migrants there is still ‘months away’.
Whatever happens, it should be obvious that housing illegal arrivals in student accommodation is a grotesque and dangerous policy – and an attack on young people’s prospects and safety. It is being enacted without any mandate or consultation with those who will suffer its effects.
I was at my own university, King’s College London, during the Covid years of 2019 to 2022. For much of that time, the undergraduate experience consisted of a couple of hours of weekly Zoom classes in a small box room, along with a heavily reduced social calendar owing to endless lockdowns. For this, we emerged tens of thousands of pounds in debt.
But in some ways, my cohort was lucky. We did not have to share our campuses with unvetted men from distant lands, many of whom could have posed a threat to our safety – and especially to that of female students.
Only this week, it emerged a 42-year-old Egyptian illegal migrant and convicted terrorist had raped a woman in Hyde Park, central London, while living in Britain at taxpayers’ expense. Data obtained by the Centre for Migration Control has meanwhile shown that Afghans and Eritreans, who comprise a large proportion of illegal arrivals, are 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than Britons.
This summer’s protests in Epping, Essex, were sparked by the arrest of Ethiopian Hadush Kebatu, who had been living in a hotel requisitioned for boat arrivals. Kebatu was found guilty of sexually assaulting and harassing a teenage girl.
To place large numbers of young male migrants close to young students – some of whom will inevitably get drunk and walk home late at night in a vulnerable state – displays a total lack of concern for their wellbeing. It is a classic example of life under ‘two-tier Keir’, where the wellbeing of migrants takes priority.
The truth is that this approach is entirely typical of a political class that has again and again acted directly against the interests of younger voters. Consider the financial aspect alone: already, according to the National Union of Students, one-third of students struggle to afford housing. In London, the average annual student rent of £13,595 is higher than the maximum loan of £13,348, leaving many students unable to afford basic living costs.
Now the Home Office will be using the taxes paid by these same students to bid against them for their own accommodation in halls and HMOs around the country. This will only further drive up rents.
Overall, it is not a good time to be young in Britain – and perhaps especially to be a graduate. Hundreds of thousands who have recently left university – including those earning as little as £27,295 per year – are paying a marginal tax rate of 55 per cent, according to the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank. Labour’s recent hike to employers’ National Insurance has sharply reduced the availability of jobs, while AI is decimating graduate roles in even blue-chip City firms.
Gen Z (those aged roughly 15 to 29) are set to be the first generation in modern history to be poorer than their parents: a sign of a country in deep decline. Pay in Britain has largely stagnated since 2008, though it has surged in America, and many ambitious young Britons are fleeing to the opportunities available in low-tax havens such as Dubai.
Given all this, it should be no surprise that young people are becoming more politically motivated than ever. Many, like me, believe the answers are to be found in Reform and other nascent outfits on the Right, while others are surrendering to the reheated Corbynism of the ultra-Left, and to a Green Party obsessed with Gaza and trans rights.
And still the migrants, legal and illegal, come. Of the 3.1million non-EU nationals that arrived in Britain between 2018 and 2024, just 16 per cent came to work, according to the Tory MP Neil O’Brien. In London, 48 per cent of all social housing is occupied by foreign-born ‘heads of household’.
Last year alone, almost 950,000 people arrived in Britain – while just 217,000 homes were built in the same period. The inevitable result is that the proportion of young people able to afford their own homes or to start a family will only continue to shrink, worsening Britain’s ongoing ‘fertility collapse’. Meanwhile, this year alone, the state-pension will see payouts rise by a further £561 thanks to the increasingly unaffordable triple lock.
It has never been clearer that young Britons like me are being robbed of our future by an incompetent, self-serving political class. Many of my generation are increasingly vocal about the sorry state in which Labour and the Tories have left our country. And they may well feel that being forced to share their university campus with illegal migrants is the last straw.
Jack Anderton is a political consultant working with Reform UK
