SUELLA BRAVERMAN: These are not extremists. Ordinary British people are being criminalized.

Eight days. That’s how long it took from Hadush Kebatu’s illegal arrival on our shores to his alleged assault of a local teenage girl. This criminal charge has pierced through the political haze, not because it is an anomaly, but because it is no longer rare. The British people are not imagining the chaos. They are living it.

They see it in Canary Wharf where the once-prestigious Britannia Hotel, now rented by the Home Office at eye-watering prices, is being used to house illegal arrivals. The images are not abstract. The anger is not theoretical. The reality is visible from their windows.

In Waterlooville, my own constituency, 35 illegal migrants are earmarked to be placed right in the centre of the shopping centre. Shopkeepers ask how this decision was made. Residents wonder if they were consulted. They weren’t. They never are. Indefensibly, the local Lab/Lib council failed to even respond to the Home Office’s inquiries about the suitability of the location, such is the level of incompetence.

Meanwhile, 1.3 million British citizens sit on housing waiting lists. But when it comes to newly arrived migrants – many of whom have crossed the Channel unlawfully – there are apartments, hotels, hot meals, legal representation and round-the-clock care. The Prime Minister breezily told Parliament this week that “many local authorities have spare housing” for asylum seekers. Has he visited them? Has he walked through the town centres now marred by decay, disorder, and despair?

This is not fringe rhetoric. It is the mainstream voice of Britain. And yet it is silenced, patronised, and, increasingly, criminalised.

Earlier: Lionel Shriver: Now I’ve left Britain, here’s what you look like.