Suella Braverman homeless tents ban: The Home Secretary has no compassion

Tweeting with characteristic gusto, she has warned of an “explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor” coming our way. Sounds bad, I agree. But what will cause these problems? Is it the cost-of-living crisis which has seen everyone, even on previously comfortable incomes, squeezed by the rising cost of food and indeed, everything? Is it the mental health crisis that has been turbocharged by the stress from the aforementioned economic pinch and the pandemic, and exacerbated by the lack of money for the so-called Cinderella service?

No, it’s the homeless sleeping in tents. Not previously seen as a fifth column, but there you go. Decrying it as a 'lifestyle choice' - OK then - Suella then rips into those so desperate that they would choose living al fresco in Storm Ciaran rather than in an actual house. She rails against the streets being “taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad”.  And there we have it - it’s yet again to strike the xenophobic note. We’re kind to good old-fashioned British homeless, she as much as says, but damn these rotten foreigners coming over here. Once more.  

Can she not see that typing the words “The British people are compassionate” comes across as completely mealy-mouthed if she thinks that compassion can only be applied to those born in the same country as you? That’s not how it works, Suella. Your title is now bleakly ironic.

Before steaming in with these astonishing plans to ban charities from handing out tents - read it again - to ban charities from handing out tents - maybe look at increasing drug and alcohol services. Maybe double-check whether there is sufficient homeless accommodation, as you claim. Maybe look at the figures on how many homeless people - the overwhelming bulk of whom were under 65 and so certainly not succumbing to old age - died last year. Maybe look at the figures for rough sleeping which suggest that across the UK there are now 73 per cent more people on the streets than in 2010.

If you’re trying to help, maybe humanise those unfortunate enough to have to live under canvas, rather than casting them as the bringers of squalor and affording them even less respect than the capital's recently-arrived bedbugs. But no, it’s another “demonise and rule”, in which the worst-off in society are here to be the punchbag. This cannot go on.