British state is gaslighting UK citizens and mad Bell Hotel decision proves it

There's a special kind of madness that only the British state can produce. This week, a High Court judge ruled that the Bell Hotel in Epping can continue to house asylum seekers despite fierce local opposition and the council's attempts to stop it.

This is the same hotel that dominated headlines over the summer: the one that housed Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the town. He was later released by mistake from HMP Chelmsford, spent days wandering around London, and eventually chose to self-deport after being given £500 of public money to do so. Even by this government's standards, that sequence of blunders is extraordinary. If there were ever a case study in state incompetence, this is it.

Epping Council argued that turning a hotel into long-term migrant housing breaches planning rules. The judge even agreed there was "a reasonable basis" for that view. But he refused an injunction, ruling that it wasn't a "flagrant or persistent abuse of planning control" and that, effectively, locals should put up with it.

It's hard to overstate how outrageous this is. I can't turn my garden shed into a quaint B&B without planning permission, but if I promised to cram it with asylum seekers and send the Home Office a bill, I'd probably get a government grant. That's where we are.

The judge said the Home Secretary's legal duty to house asylum seekers outweighed "local concerns". Translation: the rights of a Sudanese man who arrived on a dinghy supersede the rights of taxpayers who live, work and raise families here.

You'd be forgiven for wondering how we got here. At last count, more than 32,000 migrants were being housed in around 200 hotels at a cost of £5.5million a day. That's £2billion a year to warehouse people who entered illegally, while British citizens, including ex-service personnel, sleep on the streets.

And we're told this is all for "human rights". But whose? Not the British public's. And certainly not the families who've seen their communities transformed overnight.

Yet the Government, the courts and the police seem determined to gaslight the public into silence. When they're not bending over backwards to accommodate asylum seekers, they're busy contorting language to avoid offending anyone.

Take the police's new obsession with the phrase "British-born". Every time a major crime happens, we're told, loudly, that the suspect was British-born. As though that little detail should soothe public concern. We saw it after the Southport killings, when a Rwandan-heritage attacker was first described as a "Welsh choirboy". We saw it again after the LNER train stabbings, when the police rushed to assure us the suspect was "a British national, born in the UK".

Okay. And? So were the 7/7 bombers. So were the men who murdered Lee Rigby. So was Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber. The issue isn't where these individuals were born. It's what kind of culture and values they absorbed, and why the Government refuses to confront that uncomfortable truth.

And that truth is this: why are so many violent offenders, whether first- or second-generation immigrants, failing to assimilate? Why are we breeding resentment and alienation in people who enjoy every freedom this country offers?

And all the while, ordinary people are left to deal with the consequences; including rising crime, housing shortages and collapsing trust in the very institutions meant to protect them.The Bell Hotel ruling isn't just about one shabby inn in Essex; it's a symbol of how far the state has drifted from its people.

The Government will bulldoze over your council to house asylum seekers, lecture you about compassion while ignoring veterans in doorways, and hide behind buzzwords like "British-born" to mask its own failures. Then it'll send you the bill.

So yes, when MP Chris Philp called it a dark day for local democracy, he was right. This judgment confirms what millions already suspect: the system no longer works for them. Communities are expendable. Courts and ministers will always find a way to put others first.

Epping residents didn't ask to become a test case in moral grandstanding. They asked for fairness and some respect for local law. Instead, they got a wave of new arrivals and a lecture from a judge who'll never live next to a migrant hotel.

And so we're left with the perfect metaphor for modern Britain: a government that can override local law to house asylum seekers, but can't fix potholes or protect its own citizens. It's not just a bad ruling. It's a reminder that when the state stops listening, the country stops belonging to its people.