Take what follows as a little local horror story, if that makes you feel better. But I see it as a parable, a lesson in how toxic things can get when some of the basest ingredients in politics are blended just so and left to fester. Our setting today is a town a few miles outside Swansea, yet with only a few changes it could come to the end of your road.
“I was always proud to say I was from Llanelli. Now? It’s worse than embarrassed. I’m ashamed.” That’s not a disgruntled neighbour speaking, but the leader of Llanelli’s council. And what’s upsetting David Darkin isn’t some new eyesore, but the forces gathering on his streets. In the privacy of his office, he likens what’s outside to the 20th century’s darkest decade.
Just a few months ago, no one here would summon up the ghost of 1930s fascism. But that was before this spring, when the town’s top hotel was taken over by the Home Office to house about 250 asylum seekers – and all hell broke loose.
The Stradey Park Hotel is described by local people as “the jewel in Llanelli’s crown”, the place where everyone wanted to hold their weddings. Even today, as workmen pull out the building’s innards in preparation for its new role, it leaves a splendid shell: a cream-coloured Edwardian mansion tucked into a hillside, with views over the Gower coastline.
Now it is in the hands of Suella Braverman. However hard the home secretary huffs and puffs about cutting hotel bills for asylum seekers, she is now one of the biggest hoteliers in Britain. To house a huge backlog manufactured by the Tories, Braverman has just shy of 400 hotels, creating a chain more than twice the size of the Hilton group in the UK. » | Aditya Chakrabortty | Thursday, August 24, 2023
