I had a conversation recently that left me thinking about how much of our political conversation is built on things we’ve heard repeated so often that they start to feel like facts.
So I decided to check some of them.
One thing became clear very quickly: fact-checking isn’t the same as proving the other person wrong. Sometimes you discover that something you hadn’t realised is actually true.
The important question is what happens next.
“MOST ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE YOUNG MEN”
There is truth in this. In the year ending June 2026, 60% of people claiming asylum in the UK were adult males, around 22% were adult women and around 18% were children.
Small-boat crossings are even more male: 72% of detected small-boat arrivals whose age and sex were recorded were adult men.
I hadn’t realised the imbalance was quite that large.
But then I wanted to know why. The Home Office itself notes that more dangerous routes such as small-boat crossings see fewer women and children than routes such as arriving on a visa before claiming asylum.
That doesn’t tell us why any individual man made that journey. But it matters.
“Most people I see getting off small boats are men” is one claim.
“Therefore these men come from cultures that make them dangerous or abusive towards women” is a completely different one.
There are societies and religious traditions where women’s rights are severely restricted. We don’t need to pretend misogyny doesn’t exist elsewhere. But a man’s nationality, religion or asylum status doesn’t tell me how that individual man treats women. And Britain can hardly claim to have eliminated misogyny, domestic abuse or violence against women ourselves.
ARE ASYLUM SEEKERS DISPROPORTIONATELY DANGEROUS?
This is where I had to be particularly careful, because I wanted to know whether there was actually evidence behind the claim.
The UK does not publish crime statistics that allow us to calculate an offending rate for asylum seekers as a group.
There are figures about foreign nationals in the criminal justice system, and they do show foreign nationals over-represented in some offence categories. But “foreign national” is not the same thing as “asylum seeker”. That category can include people who came here to work, study, join family, or who have lived in Britain for many years.
So I can’t tell you asylum seekers are no more likely to offend than anyone else. The data simply doesn’t exist.
But neither can somebody honestly point to foreign-national crime figures and say they prove that the men arriving in small boats are dangerous or abusive towards women.
Some asylum seekers have committed horrific crimes.
So have some British-born men.
The question is whether we have evidence that allows us to generalise from those individuals to an entire population.
At present, we don’t.
DO THEY HAVE GENUINE REASONS TO BE HERE?
Since 2018, 95% of people arriving on a small boat have claimed asylum. Of those whose claims have been decided, around 60% were granted protection and 40% refused.
In fairness, that figure has limits. It excludes claims that were withdrawn or closed, and grant rates have been falling sharply. Across all asylum claims, the grant rate stood at 38% in the year ending June 2026, down from 48% the year before. It also varies enormously by nationality: 86% of Eritreans who arrived by small boat in 2025 were granted at initial decision, compared with 34% of Afghans.
So it isn’t accurate to say everyone in those boats has a genuine claim. It also isn’t accurate to say none of them do. Our own asylum system has recognised tens of thousands of them as needing protection.
And around one in seven people arriving by small boat since 2018 has been referred to the National Referral Mechanism as a potential victim of modern slavery.
Human beings are complicated. That seems worth remembering before turning a photograph of a boat into a judgement about everybody in it.
“WHY SHOULD WE HOUSE AND FEED THEM?”
There’s a contradiction here I struggle with.
People waiting for an asylum decision are generally not allowed to work. They can’t access council housing or mainstream benefits. We have deliberately stopped them from supporting themselves.
If we decide someone can’t work until we’ve checked who they are, then we have taken on responsibility for keeping them alive while we check. We can’t reasonably say both “they mustn’t work” and “why should we feed them?”
I’ve also heard that the barge used to house asylum seekers was better than what many homeless British families get.
It’s worth knowing what actually happened. When the first asylum seekers boarded the Bibby Stockholm in August 2023, Legionella bacteria had been confirmed on the barge that same day, and those on board were evacuated four days later.
And homeless families in this country are too often living in unsafe, overcrowded temporary accommodation. That is a real scandal.
But the answer to homeless families living in poor conditions isn’t poor conditions for someone else. It’s decent conditions for both.
“SCHOOLS AREN’T ALLOWED TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS ANYMORE”
I’ve heard versions of this, including that schools want to hold nativities but are “no longer allowed” to.
So again, I checked.
There is no national policy banning Christmas or nativities in English schools. The legal position is almost the reverse. The law still requires children at all state-funded schools to take part in a daily act of collective worship, which in schools without a religious character must be mainly Christian.
And schools are still celebrating. Polls suggest nativity plays remain widespread: before the pandemic, around 8 in 10 parents said their children had taken part in one. Around a third of state-funded schools in England are church or faith schools. Look at almost any local school’s website or newsletter in December and you’ll likely find nativities, carol services and Christmas celebrations.
What has changed is the style. Fewer schools now stage the traditional version: one Mumsnet poll found only around a third do, while nearly half put on an “updated” nativity instead. So yes, some things are different from when many of us were at school. But a nativity with a few extra characters in it isn’t the same as Christmas being banned.
If a school has told parents it isn’t allowed to hold a nativity, it’s worth asking: allowed by whom? There’s no law or national rule stopping it. Decisions like that are made by individual schools, often for ordinary reasons like space, time, staffing or cost. When the explanation becomes “we’re not allowed”, it’s easy for people to fill in the blank with whoever they already fear.
I also looked for evidence that Father Christmas is being banned from schools. I couldn’t find any policy or trend. What I did find were a handful of individual stories that became “Christmas cancelled” headlines. In one, a single school pantomime was made Christmas-free while the school’s other Christmas celebrations carried on. In another, a school’s “ban” turned out to be an RE lesson, announced by someone dressed as Father Christmas, and lifted after pupils wrote in. One school’s decision about one event is a very different thing from “they’ve banned Santa.”
“Some schools are doing things differently” is not the same claim as “they are forcing schools to ban Christmas.” And it’s worth noticing when we can’t actually say who “they” are.
Christmas is also changing inside our own homes. Some families still do it exactly as they always have. Others treat Santa as a game and a story, pick the traditions that suit them, or keep the day smaller and quieter. Nobody forces any of that on anyone. Families get to choose how they celebrate, and that freedom is part of what makes it theirs.
If Christmas feels different now, it may not be because someone is taking it away. It may be because we, all of us, keep reshaping it.
Inclusion doesn’t frighten me. I remember a girl at my primary school who spent much of December on the outside of everything, because Christmas wasn’t hers. If children today can celebrate Christmas and also learn that their friend’s family celebrates Eid, Diwali, Hanukkah or Vesak, I don’t see that as Britain losing something.
I think we’ve gained something.
WHAT IS BRITISH CULTURE, ANYWAY?
We often talk about the traditional British Christmas as though it arrived fully formed. It didn’t.
Christianity began in the Middle East. St Nicholas was a bishop from what is now Turkey. The Christmas tree came largely through German-speaking Europe and became fashionable in Victorian Britain. Turkey, the bird, came from the Americas. The spices in our Christmas baking travelled halfway around the world.
At the same time, Britain added its own things. Christmas crackers were invented in Victorian London, and the commercial Christmas card began here.
That’s the point. None of that makes Christmas “not British”. It shows how things become British. We borrow, adapt, mix and invent, and a few generations later it feels as though it’s always been here.
Tea came from China. Potatoes came from the Americas. Our language carries layers of Latin, French and Norse.
British culture has never been sealed in a jar. Some changes are good, some aren’t, and some deserve real debate. But change is not the same thing as erasure.
“THEY’RE PULLING DOWN OUR STATUES”
When statues have come down, like Colston’s in Bristol in 2020, it has overwhelmingly been British people arguing with other British people about British history.
You can think that was right or wrong. That’s a legitimate debate. But it isn’t something refugees did to us. Most people who have just survived a Channel crossing are unlikely to have strong views about statues in Bristol.
When “they” turns out to mean our own neighbours disagreeing with each other, it’s worth asking who told us otherwise.
RELIGION
I want my children to understand Christianity. But I don’t want them told they must believe in it to be properly British.
I want them to encounter Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and other traditions, and to understand that having no religion is also a legitimate way to live.
Freedom of religion has to include both the freedom to practise and the freedom not to.
WHAT DOES “BRITISH” EVEN MEAN?
By some of the standards we apply to newcomers, I’m not sure I’d count as very British myself. I’m not Christian. My Christmas looks nothing like the one I grew up with. When I tried to list the “British things” I do, I struggled to get past a cup of tea.
I don’t think I’m unusual. Plenty of people born and raised here wouldn’t pass that test either, and nobody questions whether they belong.
Interestingly, when the government set out what schools should teach as “British values”, it didn’t choose customs at all. It chose democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for people of different faiths and beliefs.
By that definition, Britishness isn’t about which festivals we celebrate. It’s about how we treat each other, including people who celebrate differently from us.
That seems a better test. And it’s one a lot of newcomers pass, and some of the people most worried about them don’t.“MUSLIMS WILL SOON OUTNUMBER BRITISH PEOPLE”
There’s a problem at the heart of this claim. Those aren’t opposite categories. Muslim is a religion; British is a nationality and identity. A Muslim child born and raised here can be every bit as British as I am.
At the 2021 Census, 6.5% of people in England and Wales described themselves as Muslim. Meanwhile, 90.3% identified with at least one UK national identity.
What about the future? The best-known projections, from Pew Research, estimated that under a continuing-migration scenario the UK would be about 16.7% Muslim by 2050. That scenario was driven mainly by regular migration, not asylum and not boats.
Britain is becoming more religiously and ethnically diverse. That is demographic change. It isn’t evidence that British people are disappearing.
CHECKING THE SOLUTION, NOT JUST THE PROBLEM
This is where I should be open about my own stake, because it’s the part of this I care about most personally.
My family is directly affected by disability policy. So if immigration is what draws someone to Reform UK, I’d gently suggest reading what else the party proposes. Not because anyone should tell someone else how to vote, but because governments don’t only implement the one policy that attracted us.
In August 2026, Reform set out plans to save around £50 billion a year from welfare. Reform says children, pensioners and people with severe disabilities will not be affected and will keep their cash awards.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies says Reform envisages a disability system that is much harder to qualify for, provides more in-kind support such as equipment rather than cash, and means-tests support away from better-off households. The IFS also notes there is relatively little detail on what the new assessment would actually involve.
Under the plan, conditions such as terminal illness, profound learning disability and blindness would qualify automatically, while others, including ADHD, anxiety and depression, would face “enhanced scrutiny”.
That matters enormously to families like mine. Disability isn’t neatly divided into “severely disabled” and “actually fine”. Someone can walk, talk, work, parent, study, mask brilliantly and look completely capable for an hour, and still have profound support needs. Autism is an obvious example of how little outward appearance tells us.
PIP isn’t an unemployment benefit either. It isn’t means-tested and doesn’t depend on whether someone works. People can work and still face substantial extra costs because they are disabled.
Then there’s the Equality Act.
Reform has pledged to repeal it, arguing that it has enabled unfair positive action and DEI practices. It has also pledged to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Reform says disabled people’s protections would remain and, where necessary, be strengthened. I welcome that assurance. What I cannot yet find is a settled, detailed replacement framework showing exactly how reasonable adjustments, protection from discrimination in services and education, and the existing duties would operate after the Equality Act was repealed.
So I’d want detailed answers. What happens when an autistic employee needs a reasonable adjustment? When a disabled child needs access arrangements? When a service isn’t accessible?
Those aren’t abstract questions for families like mine.
WOMEN
Fairness matters here too. Reform has proposed a Women and Motherhood Protection Act, which would increase the time limit for pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims from three months to 12. Some women will genuinely welcome that.
Reform strongly supports single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Since the 2025 Supreme Court ruling, that is broadly the legal position already.
Suella Braverman has called the NHS puberty-blocker trial “state-sanctioned child abuse”. Opposition to that trial crosses parties, and it was paused earlier this year after safety concerns from the medicines regulator.
People will reach different conclusions about all of these. But they’re part of the package too.
THE INCONSISTENCY THAT TROUBLES ME MOST
There can be enormous anxiety about protecting British women, children and vulnerable people from the possible behaviour of foreigners.
But sometimes much less curiosity about what the solutions being offered could mean for vulnerable British people themselves.
If protecting women matters, read the policies about women. If protecting children matters, read the policies about children. If British families matter, ask what happens to British families raising disabled children.
And I’d say the same about any party. The question isn’t who deserves your vote. It’s whether you know what you’re voting for.
US AND THEM
There’s something underneath all of this that I keep coming back to.
When we start talking about “them”, and saying all of them, or most of them, are dangerous, or lazy, or abusive, we stop seeing people. We see a category.
I know a little of how that feels.
As a single mum, I’ve heard the assumptions: the stereotypes about what kind of woman I must be and what kind of children I must be raising. None of it was about me. All of it was aimed at me anyway.
Now imagine if we started saying autistic boys are dangerous.
My son is autistic. He is the gentlest soul I have ever met.
If a frightening story took hold about “boys like him”, it wouldn’t matter how gentle he was. People would look at him differently before he’d said a word. Some would feel justified in treating him badly.
That’s what “us and them” does. It doesn’t just describe people. It changes how we treat them, and it lands on real individuals who have done nothing to deserve it.
So when we hear “they are all like that”, it deserves careful scrutiny. Not because every concern is wrong, but because real, genuine people get harmed when a narrative replaces the person standing in front of us.
None of this means immigration isn’t a legitimate political issue. It absolutely is.
How many people can Britain accommodate? How quickly should asylum claims be decided? What should happen when a claim is rejected, or when someone commits a serious crime? How do we integrate people well? What level of immigration is sustainable?
Those are real questions, and people can reasonably disagree about the answers.
But difficult questions deserve better than frightening stories that don’t survive being checked.
“Most small-boat arrivals are men” doesn’t become “those men come from cultures that make them dangerous or abusive towards women.”
“Britain is changing” doesn’t become “British people are being replaced.”
“A school didn’t hold a nativity this year” doesn’t become “they’ve banned Christmas.”
“Some people want to remove some statues” doesn’t become “they are erasing our history.”
And “I agree with this party about immigration” doesn’t mean “I know what the rest of its policies would mean for my family.”
The most useful question I’ve learnt to ask isn’t “whose side are you on?”
It’s: how do we know that?
What’s the source? Is it actually happening? How common is it? Are we talking about one person or millions? Have I met someone it happened to? What evidence would change my mind?
And when somebody offers a solution: what else comes with it?
Sometimes checking confirms something I didn’t expect. Sometimes it dismantles something frightening that sounded completely plausible.
Either way, I’d rather know