Labour is making a dangerous mistake if it believes deprivation is the reason the country is facing a summer of rioting. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner warned immigration is having a “profound impact on society”, but pointed out that 17 of the 18 places that saw the worst of the disorder last summer were among the poorest areas.

That is accurate, but misses the wider truth about what is going on outside of London. Look at what is happening in Epping, a market town in Essex where a three-bed semi will set you back at least £600,000. Look at the pictures of the mums with their placards, terrified for the safety of their girls, after an asylum seeker was charged with sexual assault for allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl.

Watch the videos of the women, calmly and clearly explaining their fears for their children. As they say themselves, they are not far-right, they are ordinary people pushed to the brink. Up and down the country, communities have had illegal migrants dumped on them without consultation or consideration.

Town centre hotels that were once the venues for wedding and christening parties are now closed for bookings, hired instead to house young men who have arrived in the country by small boat.

Where they came from or what they did there is unknown because they dump their identity documents.

It is completely rational for local residents to worry about this. More than a quarter of sex assaults on women successfully prosecuted in Britain were carried out by foreign nationals, according to official figures.

They are twice as likely as the rest of the population to be responsible for the crimes. The Epping mums are not protesting because they are mired in poverty and feeling resentful about their lot in life.

They have seen their town change for the worse – and the sex assault they feared may happen allegedly has.

In Northamptonshire, a rural county with low levels of deprivation, police created a PowerPoint presentation for asylum seekers on how they should behave.

It says they should recognise that women “have the same rights as men” and “must be treated with respect and courtesy”. Violence of any kind is “not acceptable and certain swear words can cause great insult”.

The guidance was drawn up after complaints from parents about young male asylum seekers loitering near a primary school.

In Scotland, a 29-year-old Afghan asylum seeker defended his charge of raping a 15-year-old girl by saying he had not been told about the cultural differences between the UK and Afghanistan. Rape of a child described as a cultural difference.

Cultural differences are things like whether you put the milk in first, not whether it is acceptable to use schoolgirls as sexual fodder.

Medieval attitudes to women are more than a cultural difference, they are absolutely fundamental and at the heart of the tensions we are seeing in even the sleepiest of small British towns.

But anger over illegal migrants is not just confined to attitudes to women. There is a widespread sense that Britain is being taken for a ride.

Even Labour peer Lord Glasman, a selfdescribed north London intellectual, says people who have raised concerns about migration have been wrongly demonised for 20 years. He has called for Navy patrols in the Channel and has stressed that borders must be controlled.

We are told that those arriving in small boats are vulnerable people fleeing war and persecution, when actually they are fleeing France. They are overwhelmingly men in their 20s, not women and children.

As this newspaper revealed, asylum seekers are working illegally as takeaway delivery riders for the big firms.

They piggybank on legitimate accounts, which means the companies have no idea who they are, so as well as exploiting the system, they are a potential security risk to customers.

Now we learn thousands of asylum seekers are using taxpayers’ cash to gamble in bookmakers, casinos and amusement arcades. Around 6,500 have used government-issued cards to have a flutter.

The Left can try all it likes to comfort itself that anger about illegal migrants is confined to the far-right or the poor and, if the boom times were back, these issues would disappear, but it is wrong.

If they fail to realise that ordinary families are fed-up and fearful, they are striking a match on the tinderbox.