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Middle-class areas must house more asylum seekers, says PM | James O'Brien reacts
Aug 13, 2026
James O'Brien reacts as Andy Burnham suggests that middle-class areas 'must house' more asylum seekers.
The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that the country "cannot have a situation where it's only the poorest communities in the country" housing asylum seekers.
The Government has plans for more housing at former military sites, subject to planning permission and approvals.
The Home Office is assessing whether Barnham Camp in Suffolk could be used to accommodate men aged between 18 and 65.
Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp
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0:00
So, wealthy areas must share the asylum burden, PM insists, may reach your ears, as Andy Burnham saying, we need to open more asylum accommodation in middle class areas
0:10
And he's kind of saying that, but it's not a policy announcement. What has happened is that a little village in Oxfordshire has responded to plans to accommodate 1,250 people on their outskirts, presumably in a former military installation
0:31
Bicester is probably the nearest place that you've heard of, unless you're familiar with that part of Oxfordshire
0:36
And Piddington holds a special place in your heart. So they've responded to this by having a sort of referendum on leaving the United Kingdom in protest against the potential use of a former military site in Bicester
0:50
And when you hear the parish council chairman, who was talking to LBC actually when he said this, he's not actually demonising or othering anybody
1:01
He's simply, as I would say, counting. to have 1,250 people brought into an environment where there's 350 people
1:09
would be like adding 32 million people into London as an example overnight
1:14
So Andy Burnham responded to questions about this by doing what he's doing at the moment
1:18
and it's succeeding for now but it's not an indefinite tactic unless the words are followed by actions
1:24
He says I'm prepared always to listen to people. It's obviously going to be challenging but I'm prepared always to listen to people
1:30
and then he simply added I do have to say We cannot have a situation where it's only the poorest communities that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers
1:41
I do believe all parts of the country need to play their part
1:46
At which point, Congo Chris Philp starts jumping up and down and insisting that no, we don't
1:51
We just need to get rid of all of them. Maybe I'm misrepresenting him. Let's have a look at what he actually said
1:56
Andy Burnham just doesn't get it. We shouldn't be housing illegal immigrants anywhere. Wealthy or not, illegal immigrants should all be deported within a week of arrival
2:04
And we're back to the definition of an illegal immigrant. So a genuine asylum seeker, the most deserving refugee on the planet
2:13
the person that even, I don't know, Enoch Powell would agree deserves to be provided with shelter, support and a new life in this country
2:21
would be an illegal immigrant. Because you can't apply for asylum until you're on British soil
2:26
and you can't get to British soil via any safe or legal routes if you hail from the massive, massive majority of countries in crisis
2:35
or countries where you're likely to be persecuted for your sexuality or your political belief or whatever it may be
2:43
And listen, I absolutely know that there are people who seek asylum
2:48
who are not acting in good faith. You have to be able to have conversations about this kind of thing
2:53
without constantly marking your own homework or being accused of ignoring things
2:58
Of course, as in any area of life, whether you're talking about FTSE 100 chief executives or welfare claimants, there'll be some wrong-uns
3:06
There just will. That's the way it goes. Quite who deserves to get their house attacked in the middle of the night by a rampaging mob for the sin of perhaps being foreign
3:17
Well, that's for the people of Thetford to decide. And not just Thetford, of course
3:21
We've seen it in Belfast, we've seen it, I think, in Southampton, but we've certainly seen a hell of a lot more of it than we have in previous years
3:31
Do you know what one of the problems is on this? It's actually quite hard to know the facts
3:42
For example, I obviously get quite a lot of jit from people who think that I live in Chiswick
3:46
and therefore have no idea. Chiswick is a sort of nice leafy suburb of West London
3:51
where I've lived for most of the last 20 years. I don't live there now, for what it's worth
3:57
But when you live in Chiswick, you don't know anything about it. And then you sort of try to find out more about what's going on
4:05
because you think, well, hang on, that building over there, surely those are asylum seekers
4:10
So all you can do is look stuff up because they can't be publishing the addresses because if they did Stephen Yaxley would be sticking them on Twitter and Elon Musk would be encouraging people or allowing other people to encourage others to go around and set fire to them And of course if you did go on Twitter to encourage other people
4:26
to go around and set fire to an accommodation for asylum seekers, you could be invited onto stage at the Reform UK annual conference
4:32
and greeted as some sort of conquering heroine. I'm not even joking. Isn't that nuts that I say all of that
4:37
and it sounds like a routine? And it's just not. It's a description of British politics in 2026
4:42
You go on Twitter, encourage people, be amplified by Elon Musk, possibly even get his approval
4:48
and call for people who've done absolutely nothing wrong to be set on fire
4:53
And then Nigel Farage will greet you like a conquering heroine on stage at his own party conference
4:58
So you look for what you've got, and you learn. I've obviously done this before, and AI is not completely reliable
5:06
Chiswick has been used by the Home Office and private providers for temporary contingency accommodation
5:12
specifically utilising local hotels to house vulnerable asylum-seeking families and individuals. I know that's true because I have some friends who are part of the community support networks
5:26
and regional advocacy groups that work in this field. And there was a temptation at one point to tell you exactly how far from my front door
5:38
a hotel housing asylum seekers was. But just in the nick of time, this is going back two or three years, no longer, because I was in Chiswick at the time, this is going back about five years, I caught myself because I would be painting a target on the door of that hotel
5:54
This was before we'd actually seen pogroms on the streets of Britain
5:58
as we have in the last couple of years. But still, you can't tell anybody responding to this Andy Burnham story angrily
6:10
You can't say, oh, look, there's already hotels. You know, hotels in middle-class areas
6:15
It doesn't get much more middle-class than flipping Chiswick. Hotels in middle-class areas where people are being housed
6:23
and listen the hotels are more likely to contain families pregnant women unaccompanied minors the
6:29
kind of people that honest bob jenryk doesn't think should be able to um look at cartoons of
6:35
disney characters the unaccompanied minors who've who've who've come here and then and then there
6:39
are lots of others as well right across west london you can tell how much integration integration
6:46
accommodation there is um by looking at what charities are doing you can't really track what
6:52
the Home Office is doing, but Refugees Welcome Hounslow was started by residents of Chiswick
6:59
helping refugee and asylum-seeking families integrate into the wider borough, not just
7:03
Chiswick, but the whole of Hounslow. You've got West London Welcome, you've got refugees at home
7:08
and then you've got on the local websites an asylum-seeker hostel planned for a certain area
7:14
and of course there'll be objectors in their droves on proposals like that, because some people
7:21
think that the numbers will be too much you can't really argue that in a very populous part of west
7:27
london in the same way that you can in a village like pittington but you will also have people who
7:32
have been very successfully persuaded that all of these human beings are scumbags and it's hmos that
7:37
are the next target so an hmo very simply is a house of multiple occupation almost all of us have
7:43
lived in some form of hmo at some point probably when you were a student or when you were a young
7:48
worker just just when you first left home you didn't move into a flat on your own you may not
7:52
have known everybody that you were sharing a house with i don't know what the exactly technical point
7:57
is um whether or not you need to have your own cooking facilities or or locks on your door but
8:03
it is now being demonized it is now being um completely obviously demonized and andy burnham
8:13
has said that wealthier areas need to share the asylum burden in ways that I suspect they already are
8:24
In the ways that I suspect they already are. 12 minutes after 11 is the time
8:31
I don know where I mean this is mad right this conversation Have you noticed yet how mad it is Because you can have a conversation about the accommodation of asylum seekers in very specific areas
8:47
without giving borderline, giving addresses to rioters, giving addresses to people who are literally perpetrating pogroms on our streets
8:59
There were three nights in Norfolk last week that can be fairly, dictionary definition, described as pogroms
9:07
We talked about that. We wondered what you would have to do to have a violent mob baying for your blood outside your home and trying to get in
9:16
it was insisted it was apparently important that we needed to stop
9:22
hotels being used former hotels repurposed hotels being used because Nigel Farage and others had successfully created a mythology around that so it was as if
9:35
asylum seekers were spending their time in the kind of exactly the same circumstances that you
9:41
would enjoy when you went on holiday and of course some hotels particularly on the edges of towns
9:46
people could remember going there for a carvery on a Sunday or remember going there for a wedding reception
9:51
and no one bothered to explain to them it's a very different place now. It's not going to have room service
9:58
You're not going to be able to, not on what the money the Home Office pays
10:02
you're not going to be able to enjoy the same experience that a tourist or a holiday maker might have enjoyed
10:07
before the hotel was repurposed. But nobody told you that. Nobody told you that
10:13
and then you've got this I think, I don't really like the phrase
10:19
legitimate concerns because it has been hijacked by people with very illegitimate concerns but
10:27
you can't really argue with numbers I say that to you often
10:31
so in order to assuage the misgivings about people who are being put up in hotels
10:40
this government and the last government have sought alternative accommodations, which means former military sites
10:49
And former military sites cause this issue in Oxfordshire and also explain some of the background to the events in Thetford
10:59
because it's not just the houses of multiple occupation that came under attack
11:06
but it's also the background of a former RAF site called Barham
11:10
which is going to be used to house large numbers of asylum seekers
11:15
And because they are less likely to be in families or be vulnerable or be unaccompanied children
11:21
there will be a preponderance, in fact, I think probably an entirety of men
11:27
who you can, depending on your politics or your proclivities, you can either describe as working age
11:33
which is relevant to our economic situation, or fighting age, which is not
11:40
but is obviously an incredibly emotive way of describing people that are being moved into a massive facility
11:44
a mile and a half up the road. It is quarter past 11
11:52
and I want to know... I mean, I think you've got two choices here
12:00
You can either be Congo Chris Philp and pretend that you weren't a minister in the last government
12:08
and pretend that there is a sort of mythical answer to this problem
12:12
which you can do in opposition. Well, I'd fix it. I'd just get rid of the problem
12:18
You can do that in opposition. You can't do that in power. What I think is hideous about people like Honest Bob Jenrick and Congo Chris Philp
12:24
is that they know this. And they know it because we've watched them do the job
12:30
That's so disingenuous, isn't it? We've watched them do the job. They know
12:36
And yes, I mean, it must be very frustrating to know that you can't do all the things
12:40
that the populists and the rabble-rousers are saying. But when you're suddenly in opposition
12:46
to announce that that's what the other lot should now be doing
12:50
the things that you personally know to be impossible You personally know to be impossible And that creates this binary choice between
13:04
either pretending that you can get rid of the issue or attempting to find solutions
13:11
that involve the accommodations of, accommodations for human beings. And I'm sort of tempted to say
13:21
can we have a conversation here that wouldn't involve painting targets on people's houses
13:29
or people's backs? Because some of the asylum accommodations, we know where they are
13:34
Epping is... I mean, is Epping a nice part of town? I've always thought Epping was all right, wasn't it
13:38
And that, of course, was the big focus of process last summer. I'm in Brentford now, further west than Chiswick, less leafy
13:48
although it is undergoing a process of gentrification. We've definitely got asylum seekers housed in Brentford
13:54
Gary Lineker opened his home to refugees, which, of course, didn't do a single thing to silence all the people
14:00
who shout at the top of their voices, why don't you open your home to a refugee? He did, on more than one occasion
14:06
I'm sure he doesn't mind me telling you. And that all speaks to an acknowledgement of a genuine issue
14:13
So politics is split now between here is an issue. I'm not going to say a problem
14:17
I'm going to say here is an issue. are there solutions that people can live with and the alternative position is here is an issue
14:29
let's pretend it's really easy to deal with so i i do want to ask you this question
14:36
if you've had anything to do with the uh i'm crikey i'm tying myself i'm not tying myself
14:44
in knots. I'm just really frightened of taking calls from people who might accidentally identify
14:49
an area that someone like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon could then, or Lucy Connolly, could then
14:53
encourage people to go and set fire to. Shall I just say what's going
14:59
on in your community? Well, number one, are we sure that so-called wealthier areas
15:06
are not already housing asylum seekers? I think they're right. As I put
15:14
it to you that they already are all right 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need but um but
15:21
the second bit of the conversation becomes about your involvement in this world so you so you work
15:26
for a charity you work for um a company you know where people are being put and you can tell me
15:34
that it's quite different from um the pictures that are being painted by many politicians and
15:41
in our media. So, do we need to, yeah, and also let's do a classic phone-in as well
15:47
Do we need to move more asylum seekers into wealthier areas? Would that help? Because I'll tell
15:53
you something for nothing. Give it five minutes and Farage will be encouraging people who don't live
15:57
in very nice areas to be up in arms about the fact that the asylum seekers have been put in leafier
16:01
suburbs than they live in. So, is there something going on here
16:05
that is interesting? Is the suggestion that wealthy areas should house more asylum seekers
16:13
A reflection of reality and a reflection of something you consider to be desirable
16:19
And yeah, I am going to ask you, are asylum seekers housed near you
16:24
Right? And if so, what's it like? I think that's an important question to ask
16:30
I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think that's an important question to ask
16:34
I know where they were, I don't know if they still are or not
16:38
when I lived in Chiswick, and it had no negative impact whatsoever upon the local surroundings, but if there'd been 2,000
16:44
people, all availing themselves of the same facilities, I'd probably feel a little
16:48
differently, but is it working where you are? 0-3-4-5-6-0-6-0-9-7-3 because I've got a horrible feeling
16:56
I've got a horrible feeling that the determination to shift people out of hotels
17:04
is actually going to cause more problems than it solves. You can integrate
17:08
the population of a hotel in a way that I don't think you can integrate the population of an
17:12
airfield not least because airfields are going to be away from the most built-up areas
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