How would you like it for the next five years that your rent is paid, your council tax is paid, and your gas and electric bill is paid?
You would? Then the way to do it is simply be a migrant and abracadabra the Home Office will fix it.
This astonishing situation was revealed by Serco, a private contractor, acting on behalf of the Home Office, which has published a document calling on landlords in the North West, Midlands and East of England, to come forward and rent their homes to the exploding numbers of asylum seekers.
Normally, the landlords would run a mile from offering their important investment (many are in a small way of business) to undocumented tenants. The first thing an asylum seeker does on approaching the White Cliffs of Dover is to throw their passports overboard so nobody can contest their claim either to their age or the country from which they allegedly fled.
Starmer has decided it will be cheaper to house the migrants rather than put them up in hotels. I don’t doubt that, but clearly it would be a damn sight cheaper if we didn’t take the migrants in the first place.
In the first four months of this year, 9,500 migrants have arrived by boat, that’s 33 per cent up year on year. You don’t hear anything about smashing the gang anymore, do you? In fact, it would be closer to the truth if Labour changed the narrative to inviting the gangs or possibly inviting the landlords.
The knock-on from what is an enormously attractive offering to landlords is that tens of thousands of flats will be taken, and therefore, the price of those remaining will go up. I wonder if Starmer and his chums have ever heard of supply and demand before setting out on this path?
What I didn’t know until seeing the Serco documents is that they already handle 7,000 properties accommodating 30,000 migrants. And you wonder why there is nothing to rent your way or that the rents are simply beyond your ability to pay.
Serco claims that switching to the private rented market means that the per night costs will fall from £145 to £34. A considerable saving, but surely we can’t carry on like this.
Keir Starmer's answer to the migrant crisis is to pay their rent, council tax and energy bills - Kelvin MacKenzie
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I saw some polling a couple of weeks back which showed, for the first time, people are more concerned about immigration than they are about the state of the NHS and the cost of energy. Yet we have a Prime Minister with a massive majority who clearly doesn’t give a damn about thousands of people washing up here or the anger it causes.
Starmer talks a good game but delivers nothing. With Reform and the Greens going to destroy Labour from opposite ends of the spectrum in the council elections on Thursday, his people have briefed The Telegraph, claiming they are going to bring in laws making it harder for foreign students to stay in the country by taking low-paid jobs such as healthcare roles.
Is that it? The nation is up in arms over migration, and yes, great to make it harder for foreign students, but that is just a headline rather than a policy.
I guarantee that Reform will murder Labour at Runcorn and Mosely, the by-election caused by the drunken MP being convicted of beating up his constituent in the street. Now Labour will be beaten up in the polling booth.
Although it’s the sixth safest Labour seat in the country, even its supporters hate them thanks to the winter fuel allowance being taken from them, the massive tax rises and the general sense that we have an incompetent in Downing Street and there’s nowt we can do about it.
There’s plenty of gossip around that Wes Streeting would make a better leader. I doubt it. Until Labour gets to grips with the migrant issue, it will remain hugely unpopular and unelectable in any poll in the future.
The only good news is that wooing the landlords rather than the voters means they are done for.
