Thursday briefing: What happens after an asylum hotel closes?

In today’s newsletter: With more sites closed and more lives upended, a look at the rhetoric and reality of where asylum seekers should be housed Good morning. This week, immigration minister Anna Turley announced, with minor fanfare, the government will stop using a further 13 hotels to house asylum seekers across the country. It brings the total shut this year to 44, in pursuit of Labour’s manifesto pledge, now reiterated by Andy Burnham, to cease hotel use completely by the end of this parliament. Doing so would remove what have become highly visible symbols of an increasingly toxic debate about migration. Less than 160 to go, according to the Home Office. There was a risk the announcement might be drowned out by howls of rightwing outrage after the prime minister dared suggest that middle-class areas also ought to house asylum seekers. “We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,” Burnham said. “I do believe all parts of the country need to play their part.” (In England, asylum seekers made up 0.29% of people in the most deprived local authorities, compared with 0.05% of peop