Opinion: What do you think of when you hear the word ‘hotel’?

When The Daily Telegraph argues that home secretary Suella Braverman speaks for ‘ordinary people’ on migration and the treatment of asylum seekers heading to Britain, it is correct. Everything she says echoes the deep misunderstandings and prejudices that are wedged hard in the minds of a large proportion of the British people. I’m not accusing those ‘ordinary’ people – who are entirely wrong about the migration issue and how to tackle it – of racism, xenophobia or any other great social ill. They are lacking only in two things: public funding for essential public services, and a source of accurate information about what it means to come to the UK as an asylum seeker or refugee.Braverman has been leaning into the assumption that life as a new arrival in the UK is one of easy transition and straightforward handouts. She chose to push back on block booking for hotel space to house asylum seekers because she knows how that feels to people who are struggling to feed their children, facing ever-rising rents on unfit properties and, for a growing minority, true destitution.