What’s Happening to the UK? How the Far-Right Found Its Voice in a Broken Nation

 

Hotels across the UK are becoming the stage for an ugly drama. Outside, crowds gather with flags and placards, chanting slogans like “Make Epping Safe Again” and “No More Silence – We Fight.” Inside, asylum seekers families, children, people fleeing wars and persecution wait in fear.

This is not a random uprising of “concerned citizens.” This is the far-right, emboldened and organised, feeding off Britain’s political failures. And unless the country wakes up, this will not just be about hotels. It will reshape what it means to be British.

To understand why far-right protests are spreading, we must look at the past decade. Successive Conservative governments promised to “take back control.” Brexit was sold as a cure to everything more housing, more money for the NHS, safer streets, restored sovereignty. None of it came true.

Instead, austerity hollowed out communities. Libraries closed. Youth centres disappeared. Local councils went bankrupt. The NHS collapsed under waiting lists. Wages stagnated while billionaires got richer.

People were promised transformation. What they got was decline.

And into this betrayal stepped the far-right. They pointed to migrants and asylum seekers as the reason everything feels broken. Conveniently, these shifts blame away from the politicians who created the mess.

Let’s not pretend this is just fringe extremists. Senior politicians have poured fuel on the fire. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman spoke of an “invasion” on Britain’s southern coast. She called the arrival of asylum seekers a “hurricane.”

This language is not accidental. It’s designed to dehumanise, to reduce vulnerable people into a faceless threat. When politicians talk like this, they give the far-right permission to act. They make protests outside hotels feel justified, even righteous.

And Braverman is not alone. For years, both Labour and Conservative governments have played the same game: treating migration as a problem to be “tough” on, rather than a reality to be managed with fairness and compassion. This cowardice has allowed far-right narratives to thrive.

The protests are not just happening in the streets they are planned online. Facebook groups, often filled with recycled lies, are the beating heart of the movement. One exaggerated incident is enough to trigger outrage across dozens of towns.

The pattern is predictable:

• A rumour spreads usually unverified.
• Far-right pages amplify it with memes and dramatic captions.
• Local groups pick it up, framing asylum seekers as a danger.
• Outrage builds until it spills into the real world.

This is not “organic community anger.” It is manufactured, fuelled by algorithms that reward hate because hate generates clicks.

What makes this truly depressing is how misplaced the anger is. Protesters shout at hotel windows, but the real causes of their despair are elsewhere.

• It wasn’t asylum seekers who slashed local services. It was George Osborne’s austerity budgets.
• It wasn’t asylum seekers who caused housing shortages. It was decades of government failure to build affordable homes.
• It isn’t asylum seekers making it impossible to get a GP appointment. It’s chronic NHS underfunding and staff shortages.
• It isn’t asylum seekers who broke Britain’s economy. It’s the chaos of Brexit and years of political mismanagement.

The far-right wants people to believe Britain is “unsafe” because of migrants. The truth is Britain feels unsafe because people have been abandoned by their government.

The UK has a proud history of offering refuge from Jewish families fleeing the Holocaust to Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin, to Syrians fleeing war. It has always claimed to be a place of fairness and justice.

But today, that identity is under attack. If the loudest voices become those shouting at hotels, Britain risks becoming a nation defined by hostility, not compassion.

The question is not just about asylum seekers. It is about who the British want to be. Do they want to be the people who slam the door on the desperate? Or do they want to be the people who stand against hate and demand real answers to the crises tearing communities apart?

The far-right does not need to “win” power to succeed. It only needs to make its ideas seem normal. Already, the rhetoric of “swarms,” “invasions,” and “safety” has entered mainstream conversation. Already, politicians on both sides adopt tougher stances, terrified of losing votes.

This is how democracy corrodes not in sudden coups, but in small shifts where exclusion becomes acceptable and cruelty becomes common sense.

A Call to Action

It’s not enough to shake our heads at these protests. The UK needs a different response:

• Expose the lies. Misinformation about asylum seekers must be challenged loudly and consistently.
• Hold politicians accountable. When leaders use dehumanising language, they must be called out for fuelling hate.
• Redirect the anger. Britain’s problems are real, but they are political problems, not migrant problems.
• Reclaim the narrative. Compassion, fairness, and solidarity are not weaknesses. They are the foundation of a strong society.

What’s happening outside asylum hotels is not just about immigration. It’s about Britain’s soul. It reveals a nation in crisis, where betrayal and despair have left people vulnerable to manipulation.

But there is still a choice. The UK can confront its real problems inequality, austerity, broken politics or it can continue to scapegoat the powerless. It can rebuild around compassion and justice or slide further into fear and division.

The far-right wants Britain to forget its history of refuge and pride itself on hostility. The question is whether Britain will let them.