A new scheme called “Homes for Ukraine” was announced on Monday by Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, whereby individuals, community groups, charities and businesses can put Ukrainians up for six months.
From parishioners in the Cornish village of St Mabyn to anarchist squatters occupying a sanctioned oligarch’s Belgravia mansion in the hope that it could be repurposed to house refugees, a variety of volunteers have mobilised.
In early March Boris Johnson promised that “a couple of hundred thousand” Ukrainian refugees would be resettled in Britain -- up from the equally suspiciously round number of 100,000 quoted by Priti Patel, a day before.
Home Office insiders are sceptical about these figures.
The number was simply calculated by counting the number of Ukrainians in the UK and working out the total if each one brought five people over, @Anoosh_C hears from within the department.
“It’s a guess,” an official tells the NS.
While civil servants privately decry Priti Patel's lack of aptitude, insiders say that she keeps her place at the cabinet table because she plays to the anti-immigration voter base.
“She’s a state-educated Asian woman who appeals to old white men on immigration -- she’s the perfect Tory minister,” as one political spinner once put it to @Anoosh_C.
Patel’s unashamedly hardline stance on migration is even harder in private, according to those in the know.
Little wonder, then, that responsibility for the refugee sponsorship scheme was soon quietly handed over to Michael Gove.
He is known as the go-to minister for cleaning up colleagues' mess, and pushing through sticky policy.
The former MP Richard Harrington, who first entered government in 2015 as minister for Syrian refugees, has been quickly ennobled and appointed minister for refugees and will report to both Gove and Patel’s departments.
Yet this, too, has been a “confusing” change, according to a Home Office official.
Amid all this confusion, the thousands of people who want to host refugees await their instructions. newstatesman.com/world/europe/u…
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🧵 The powerful closing paragraphs of @Anoosh_C's story, Bust Britain. 🧵
“Collapsing councils are a microcosm of the British state’s failings: austerity, short-termism, Treasury myopia and decades of failure to solve the so-called wicked problems of policymaking, such as council tax, planning and our broken social care model. Every block in the Jenga tower appears to be wobbling.
“The NHS is stuck with one in ten jobs vacant, crumbling buildings and equipment, strikes and poor patient outcomes. Welfare is no longer acting as a safety net: the UK now has record levels of long-term sickness at 2.8 million and a system too threadbare to propel people back into work. So depleted are our armed forces that military chiefs mull the return of conscription. Police fail to solve 90 per cent of crimes. And best of luck to anyone who encounters a prison or courtroom.
Today the £4.2bn industry as a whole is in labour crisis.
In recent decades, the children and grandchildren of pioneering Bengali restaurateurs have opted not to join the family business, going instead into professional jobs supported by access to university.
The steady stream of migrants looking to start out in the kitchen and build a successful restaurant has slowed to a trickle, too.
In 2007, 12,000 Indian restaurants were open across the UK. Today there are only 8,500 – and more are closing every week, according to the industry.
What does the reshuffle tell us about the Prime Minister?
Sunak’s hand was forced as he could no longer delay the appointment of a new party chairman.
He has tried to turn Zahawi’s sacking to his advantage by framing the reshuffle as a “100-day reset” of his government, which is mired in crisis due to strikes, scandals and the squeeze on living standards.
Ukraine’s national security adviser, @OleksiyDanilov, speaks to @MacaesBruno about German betrayal, the coming Russian onslaught and why the West is scared.
Read more ⬇️
Danilov shared his thoughts on Germany’s refusal to send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Kyiv, who might eventually replace Vladimir Putin and why Russia wants a “Korean solution” to end the war.
He also spoke about the helicopter crash in Brovary, Ukraine, on 18 January – in which 14 people died, including Ukraine’s interior affairs minister – and whether Russia was responsible.