Over eight in ten British voters believe that the left-wing Labour Party government is not doing enough to prevent illegal immigrants from reaching English shores, potentially spelling trouble for recently installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
A Find Out Now survey of over 10,000 voters conducted for the Mail on Sunday has further demonstrated the public dissatisfaction with the response to the migrant crisis in the English Channel, with 82 per cent of respondents saying that they believe the government should do more to stop the arrival of people smuggler-operated migrant boats, compared to just five per cent who disagreed.
The poll comes in the wake of new Prime Minister Andy Burnham arguing that more areas of Britain need to “play their part” in taking in alleged asylum seekers into their communities, specifically signalling out middle-class neighbourhoods.
According to the survey, the majority of the public is against the idea, with 57 per cent opposed to just 15 per cent in favour of bringing migrants into their midst.
Even among voters in liberal-leaning, wealthier parts of the country that often back pro-migration parties, only 51 per cent agreed that migrants should be more widely dispersed throughout the country.
One such area set to be enriched is the small village of Piddington in Oxfordshire, which is set to see around 1,250 mostly military-age male migrants housed in a camp just outside town. Enraged by the scheme, the village of just 314 people has backed holding a referendum on seceding from the United Kingdom.
The apparently unpopular plans from the Burnham government were intended to act as a fix for the currently unpopular scheme of putting asylum seekers up in hotels across the country at taxpayer expense.
Developed under the former Conservative Party government, the scheme similarly saw protests outside hotels, including those that housed migrants who went on to sexually assault residents, including underage girls.
In contrast to the approach from the left-wing Labour government, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has said that it would look to house asylum seekers who arrived in the country illegally in third-party nations, such as Albania or Rwanda.
This would come in addition to plans to deport all illegals currently in the UK, estimated to be at least one million people. Rather than dispersing such migrants equally across the country, the party has suggested establishing deportation hubs specifically in areas of Britain that voted for the open-borders Green Party.
To prevent further crossings of the English Channel, Mr Farage has said he would order the Royal Navy to police the waterway and send people-smuggling boats directly back to the beaches of France. This is opposed to the current protocol of picking up migrants in the middle of the Channel and bringing them ashore in Britain where they are free to claim asylum.
Reform would also look to reduce the pull factor for prospective illegals by barring foreigners from government-subsidised housing and from Britain’s universal credit welfare scheme, which migrants are currently benefiting from to the tune of over £1 billion per month.
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