Those of a certain vintage will recall the old-fashioned pressure cooker that served many a household in the days before every kitchen appliance came with more functions than a Swiss Army knife and required a computer science degree to operate.

Ours was a towering aluminium number that roiled away atop the cooker like a culinary Vesuvius, ever threatening to erupt. And on top sat the valve weight that danced a furious jig and which, as a child, I feared would be wheeched out of its place in a jet of steam and embed itself in my eye.

Release valves might make us anxious but they serve a vital function. Let pressure build up too long without venting and the laws of physics will take their course. Politics is a lot like that. Signs of mounting discontent are sometimes unpalatable but must always be heeded.

Here’s one of them. Last week, Edinburgh City Council was accused of prioritising migrants and refugees in the allocation of social housing.

The Labour-run administration voted to end a policy put in place in April 2025 which saw applications for housing from Edinburgh’s general population frozen while resources were redirected to the council’s legal obligations.

These include housing the suddenly homeless, those fleeing domestic violence, families with children in unfit accommodation, and people with severe health needs. Most would agree that, if a council is going to prioritise some applicants over others, these are the sorts who need help the most.

The cost of central government’s failure to secure our borders is being passed on to councils and residents 

The trouble is refugees with leave to remain. They typically must depart the accommodation provided to them when they were asylum seekers and find somewhere else to live.

Since this change in circumstance renders them homeless, they can apply for council housing. Housing applications from refugees have increased significantly.

Three years ago, refugee households accounted for just one per cent of temporary accommodation in Edinburgh. Today that figure is 16 per cent. In July 2024, the city was housing 281 refugees; today, it’s 1,442. That’s an increase of 413 per cent in the space of two years.

The council’s line is that many of these refugees are in temporary rather than permanent council housing, but this is a circular argument. Should they find a tenancy elsewhere then become homeless because of a marriage break-up, or have children living in unsuitable conditions, or develop major health issues, they would again be eligible for priority treatment.

Besides, it is a straightforward matter of arithmetic: every social housing unit allocated to a refugee household, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, is a unit that cannot be assigned to a British national.

Edinburgh is not alone in feeling the pressure. It’s a similar story in Glasgow and Manchester and London and elsewhere. The cost of central government’s failure to secure our borders is being passed on to councils and residents. Local communities with already insufficient resources and infrastructure are expect to stretch these even tighter to meet the needs of new population flows.

If there are any government ministers or their advisers reading this, I cannot stress to you enough how rapidly pressure is building on this issue. People bring it up to me unprompted and the discontent crosses traditional political divides, with even Left-leaning voters growing frustrated. These are not anti-immigration ideologues or Tommy Robinson types. They are liberal-minded, compassionate people.

The progressive governing class won’t have a bar of it. Their denial follows a standard pattern: there is no problem; the problem has been invented by Reform, the Right-wing press, and Elon Musk’s algorithms; the people who believe there is a problem are stupid and bigoted; there might be a problem but it’s a very small one; there clearly is a problem but there is nothing that can be done about it; there is something that can be done but doing it would betray our ‘values’.

This thought process is a product of our decadent governing arrangements, in which the country is run by a hyper-liberal elite cloistered in pockets of government, third-sector and academic power in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Policies are drawn up with no consideration of public opinion beyond phoney consultations that largely involve responses from NGOs either funded by or seeking money from the Scottish Government.

When these policies are foisted on the masses and the masses express disquiet, we get ‘Dear bigots…’ ad campaigns and scoldings about far-Right misinformation and the like.

Utterly absent from the governing process is substantive democracy. Yes, we have free and fair elections for the Scottish Parliament, but there is more to democracy than stuffing a bit of paper in a ballot box every five years.

The public should have a say, a real say, in how they are governed. They should be part of the design process. Not through middle-class wheezes like citizens’ assemblies – another elite- invented concept, dominated inevitably by those with social capital – but by decision-makers spending time outside Holyrood listening to ordinary voters.

No policy area is more urgently in need of democratic intervention than migration and asylum. The gulf between what the voters want and what is done in their name is chasmic. There’s an explanation for this, of course: when it comes to border security, democracy comes to the wrong conclusions.

Edinburgh is not alone in feeling the pressure with a similar story in Glasgow, Manchester, London and elsewhere.

Most Scots consider it a moral duty to help a stranger in need. The Kirk’s pews might lie empty these days but the parable of the Good Samaritan still resonates. We ought to welcome refugees, and not economic migrants posing as refugees, where we are able to assist them and can be assured they pose no threat to us. The welcome given to Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s bloodthirsty war machine is an obvious example.

But our approach must be one of caution, based on national security, community cohesion and genuine need. We should set caps on numbers so that services such as housing are not overwhelmed. This is an asylum policy the public could have faith in.

The governing class, however, could not accept such a system. For one, it would require legislative and treaty changes to change asylum policy from the administrative management of international obligations to political decision-making guided by the democratic will.

For the current establishment, this leaves rather too much to electoral chance and the whims of the public, and nothing fills our betters with more horror than the thought of ruffians like us having a say in running the show.

The retreat from democracy on asylum policy, and the imposition of elite preferences regardless of public opinion, sometimes with enthusiasm if not palpable glee, has ramped up the pressure, and instead of a dancing valve we see protests, street disturbances, votes for Reform, and mounting dissatisfaction with politics across the board.

Open-borders zealotry must be dialled down to vent some of the pressure and policy reoriented to mainstream public opinion. If not, anger and resentment will continue to build until they explode, perhaps into a sinister, much more extreme form of politics.