{"id":85219,"date":"2025-08-21T08:32:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=85219"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:34:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:34:42","slug":"we-will-be-better-off-without-the-tories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/08\/21\/we-will-be-better-off-without-the-tories\/","title":{"rendered":"We will be better off without the Tories"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a headline<\/a> in the Financial Times this morning:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The substance of the story does not matter in any large part.<\/p>\n

The fact is that what we are seeing is a Conservative Party leader who is almost devoid of ideas, seeking to exploit a situation that has arisen as a direct consequence of her own actions as part of a government in which she was a Cabinet minister.<\/p>\n

More than anyone else, the problem of the asylum seekers living in hotels is the creation of the Tories. Like Labour (and I am referring to the Blair and Brown administrations here), the Tories refused to let asylum seekers work whilst waiting for decisions on their status to be resolved, so that they might finance themselves during the interim, as many countries permit. Instead, the Tories persistently chose to make them a cost to the state.<\/p>\n

Worse than that, the Tories insisted that asylum applications should not be processed over an extended period before leaving office, increasing the number of people living in hotels as a deliberate way to heighten the stress now being seen.<\/p>\n

Kemi Badenoch\u2019s comments reveal three things.<\/p>\n

First, there is straightforward hypocrisy: she helped create this problem.<\/p>\n

Second, there is bandwagoning. What has happened in one particular case is highly unlikely to be replicable in many others. Using a quirk of planning law is not the basis for migration policy. What is more, Badenoch has nothing to say about what should be done to assist the people living in hotels because the UK government has not formed a coherent policy on managing legitimate asylum claims by those arriving in the UK. Badenoch\u2019s suggestion that we use tents is deliberately cruel, while also being intended to indicate refugee status \u2014 in the process, in fact, confirming that many of those claims are justified.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, if this is the best the Tories can manage, the fact that they are languishing in the polls is unsurprising. Whatever they do now, they are without a future unless (and I think this is likely) they are subject to a reverse takeover by Reform. The one thing that they will never be again is the obvious party of government.<\/p>\n

What I know is that we will be better off without them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a headline in the Financial Times this morning: The substance of the story does not matter in any large part. The fact is
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