If you treat permanent emergency as sound government, you soon forget what normal looks like. For years now ministers have leaned on private companies to run an improvised asylum estate in dozens of hotels, then feigned surprise when local anger flares. Epping is what happens when you mix real local anxieties, a serious criminal case and a stream of inflammatory headlines, then ask planning law to tidy up the mess. The court has refused to let protest set the legal agenda, which is proper, but its ruling also confirms that a long running breach can become acceptable simply because it is difficult to undo. That is very close to the habit of power I once called doublethink, in which you claim to respect local democracy while structuring the system so that it almost never prevails. Until the government builds transparent, decent reception centres and puts the contracts and numbers on the record in Parliament, people will quite reasonably suspect that someone else is profiting from their unease.