Britain needs to make itself much less appealing to asylum seekers if it wants to control soaring numbers coming here illegally.
That's the verdict of the Danish politician whose hardline policies drove a significant reduction in the number of migrants coming to the Scandinavian country to try to gain residency status as a refugee.
Denmark is governed by the centre-left Social Democratic party – whose values are similar to those of new Prime Minister Andy Burnham's Labour – which has been following a tough policy aimed at 'zero asylum seekers' for several years.
When measured in relation to per capita population, Denmark and the UK until recently had quite comparable numbers: as recently as 2023, Denmark had an average of 57 per 100,000 while in Britain it was 55.
But since then the two nations' experiences have dramatically diverged: Britain's number has almost tripled and now amounts to 145 claims per 100,000 citizens while Denmark's number has fallen by a third to just 40 claims.
