Second, we have a massive housing crisis, and shortages of all four of the types of accommodation Labour is looking to buy up, including student housing. HMOs in particular are our highest-density tenure type, and are most prevalent where shortages are most acute.

If the Home Secretary gets her way, thousands of communities will suddenly have one or more local, in-their-face examples of the Government prioritising asylum seekers for scarce housing. These will be spread out across residential areas and literally closer to home.

Labour may try to argue that the overall impact will be minimal. There are, after all, only 35,000 or so asylum seekers currently housed in hotels versus expert estimates of a national housing shortfall of four million properties.

But that won’t wash. Not only will this decision exacerbate local shortages in some areas, it will push up local rents in order to save the Treasury money and allow Rachel Reeves to claim she’s making a saving.

More importantly, to anyone struggling with record rental or mortgage repayments, or stuck on years-long waiting lists for council housing, it will indisputably send a message about ministers’ priorities and become a lightning rod for resentment.

This should be obvious from the backlash over hotels. Locals are not angry about losing the rooms — how often do they stay in a hotel near their home? — but instead that a local business and community asset has been bought out by the state, and that their communities are being used for storage by the Home Office.

Of course, Labour probably hopes that the pain will be temporary; eventually it will have “cleared the backlog” by rubber-stamping applications, and tens of thousands of people will no longer show up as asylum seekers. Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, seems pretty determined to crack down hard on the riots.

But that’s a big bet: the housing crisis isn’t going anywhere, and there’s no reason to think public anger over immigration will either. Yet with the Treasury involved, there’s no question of the Prime Minister putting any money where his mouth is. And so Labour proposes to put asylum seekers there instead.

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Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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