MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Elite Lefties welcome migrants - if they're not on their doorsteps

Published: 22:01, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 22:14, 15 August 2026 On the issue of immigration, there has always been a great deal of long-distance charity and plentiful signalling of virtue by the new Left-wing elite. Even as they call for the rest of us to show more generosity and patience, there has always been a suspicion that the better-off Left secretly nurture a strong hope that migrants will keep their distance from the affluent and the privileged. The comfortably situated, liberal-minded university-educated classes, who like to think of themselves as open-hearted and broad-minded, will leap to defend the admission to this country of large numbers of economic migrants. They will invariably call them ‘asylum-seekers’, though everyone knows that very few of those coming to our shores are genuinely seeking safety from oppressive regimes, and that most are coming here from safe countries. But what they really mean is that other people – poorer, less powerful and less privileged than them – should have to cope with the undoubted problems that large-scale illegal migration brings. They are being generous with other people’s lives, schools and hospitals, transport, water, infrastructure and open space. So the Prime Minister may have unintentionally upset a lot of his own better-off voters (for most such people are these days on the political Left) by saying last week that more affluent areas must ‘play their part’ in accepting such migrants. They may say in public that they long to do their bit for the cause of open borders and free movement that they claim to believe in. But in practice they may be a good deal less keen. Mr Burnham said this just as the country was absorbing the implications of the vastly bigger boats in which these migrants are now arriving almost daily. Meanwhile the Government are planning to house large concentrations of migrants in former military bases, often close to quite small villages whose inhabitants wonder how they will cope with such a huge change in their lives. In these circumstances, The Mail on Sunday’s poll by Find Out Now will not be easy reading for Mr Burnham. A majority of the 10,549 people asked said, possibly through gritted teeth, that ‘asylum seekers’ should be housed evenly across all areas. In many cases this is probably as near as they can come to saying ‘not near me’. For the poll shows clearly that very few actually welcome this sort of immigration. French authorities released a photo of dozens migrants attempting to reach a 'mega dinghy' with 230 migrants on it  Mr Burnham said that more affluent areas must ‘play their part’ in accepting migrants just as the country was absorbing the implications of the vastly bigger boats in which ‘asylum seekers’ are now arriving in almost daily An overwhelming 82 per cent said the Government should do more to stop illegal entry altogether. A tiny 5 per cent disagreed with that. And 57 per cent said their own locality should not take any more. Mr Burnham would be wise to heed the 82 per cent who want the whole thing stopped. Millions think this crisis has been going on quite long enough and would be glad (for instance) to see the Rwanda scheme revived, under which such migrants would be sent to a third country. Sir Keir Starmer abruptly cancelled it just as there were signs that it might be starting to work. The new Health Secretary, Yvette Cooper, recently stated that Labour ‘did not do government very well’ under Sir Keir’s premiership. She was certainly right about that. The question is whether it will be any better under Andy Burnham.