Katherine Denkinson exposes reform_uk_2025, a TikTok account falsely claiming London’s £1.4B+ "luxury" housing renovations—like AI-voiced, wide-angle-shot flats—are handed to "boat people," a spoofed rape-accused tenant, or Muslims while veterans sleep in gardens. The platform weaponizes real estate marketing tactics with sinister music and racist voiceovers, stoking outrage against asylum seekers while ignoring British homelessness, revealing a selective right-wing empathy. Hypocrisy thrives as poverty is framed as foreign exploitation rather than systemic failure. [Automatically generated summary]
As always, we are your host, Jake Rakotansky, Annie Kelly, and Travis View.
Welcome, beloved listeners.
It's your UK correspondent, Annie Kelly, speaking.
A few weeks ago, I appeared on the podcast to talk to you about what I termed London Has Fallen Content, in which travel influencers come to my country's capital city and talk about how dirty, crime-ridden, and unsafe it is, which they nearly always attribute to mass immigration.
Shortly after that episode was released, I saw some original reporting from the outlet London Centric about another viral anti-migrant content creator focused on London.
But this time, their gimmick was a little bit different.
The article focuses on a TikTok account whose content mostly consisted of virtual house tours of recently renovated London houses and flats.
Now, it's not unusual for estate agents to advertise their wares on social media these days, but what was different about this account was the fact it wasn't actually attempting to sell these places at all.
Instead, the account used its videos to stoke viral outrage by claiming that all of the residences depicted were being handed over to undeserving, ungrateful, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.
Here's how the article begins.
The TikTok account was simple, addictive, and, for many people, enraging.
Under the username reform underscore UK underscore 2025, it offered video tours of newly refurbished houses across London, describing how they had just been handed over for free to illegal immigrants.
One video claimed a house had been fitted with ensuite bathrooms for the benefit of boat people, in quotes.
Another told viewers that a tenant had been accused of rape, while others said properties had been reserved for Muslims.
One video showed a group of black men inside a West London property and captioned the clip, quote, housing them so veterans can sleep in their garden.
In one clip, a quote, Palestinian asylum seeker was said to have accepted the keys to the property while proclaiming his hatred of Britain.
Another spoofed an advert for Jet 2 holidays by offering immigrants the chance to be picked up from the channel and have their accommodation paid for by British taxpayers.
Let's take a look at some examples which were included in the article.
Let me show you guys an HMO we've signed up, Asylum Seekers, a.k.a. Illegal Migrants, four months ago.
And take you right to your four-star hotel, where you can work illegally, claim benefits, and never be deported.
Watch how the British struggle paying the highest taxes since the 1940s while you pay nothing and even receive benefits.
All this and more.
Yeah, we're racist.
I mean, that poor woman who did that voiceover for the Jet 2 holiday commercial can't be happy that their voice seems to have been AI-duplicated in order to stoke up this outrage.
Yeah, yeah, it's like AI layered on top of AI there, where, yeah, they clearly got the sort of audio from the Jet2 holidays parody.
And then they've also got what I think is an AI American accent speaking over the top of it as well.
Yeah, they got the white racist American guy.
This is for like advanced online racism.
You're going to have your left ear is going to be one racist voice, and your right ear is a totally different one.
This is a test they give you actually to check for ADHD, the one racist guy in your left ear and a less racist person in your right ear.
And here's another video.
So you can see that they all follow quite a similar theme here.
Let me show you guys a 15 unit HMO for the asylum seekers, aka illegal migrants in Chelsea, London.
I mean, this is very strange because, yeah, the video, like without the sort of voiceover, would like be right in place at like any other real estate kind of like property tour.
It's just someone sort of like walking through with what looks like their handheld phone and opening doors, showing off the living room and the bathroom.
But there's like, there's, of course, when added with the voiceover, there's like, well, it's like, here's where the sort of the ungrateful drain on society foreigners will be like, you know, exploiting you, the hardware-working taxpayer.
Here's where they will be taking what is rightfully yours is very, very strange.
Yeah, I think one thing that struck me about that video, which our listeners won't be able to see, but was that they were doing the, because I've, yeah, I've watched a few of these videos, ones that are actually legitimate for like selling houses and stuff like that.
And one thing I always notice is that they use a specific kind of lens, I think, that makes everything look a bit wider, makes it all look a bit spacious.
The same tricks that the landlords post on Zillow.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and then you actually go and see the property and you're like, huh, it's actually like way narrower than the pictures made it look.
But they're doing that here.
So they're kind of like, yeah, as you say, Travis, they're kind of, the visuals itself is just like, well, look at this luxury flat.
Wouldn't you like to live here?
And then it's just like the sinister music and the, yeah, the whispered voiceover talking about how it's going to ungrateful asylum seekers who hate you and hate Britain.
Yeah.
It's like, it's like, oh man, that marble countertop does look lovely.
I can't believe people who don't deserve it.
They're getting it.
Yeah, for people listening, the video is like Chris Redfield going into different rooms in Resident Evil.
Like it's these kind of slow-mo shots of like a door opening.
But instead of zombies, he's like, you know, he's afraid that like people of color will be on the other side.
Yeah, and I think one thing to mention is that both houses and flats look really nice in those videos as well.
So yeah, it's this funny contrast really of kind of highlighting the luxury while also highlighting the supposed undeserving nature of the people who are getting it, which is just clearly designed to stoke up resentment and hatred.
Well, I think perhaps like the message or the implication was that the viewer looks at this lovely, you know, place to live and says like, damn, my bathroom isn't quite that nice.
I don't have this sort of like that nice white tile.
I don't have that kind of like more advanced toilet.
Contrast Of Luxury And Hatred00:02:29
It was like, why are they getting it, not me?
And it seems like that zero-sum nature is just really threaded through the content here.
You know, it's always saying stuff like, oh, you know, we're giving them this so that veterans can sleep in the garden.
And you can kind of see from the comments as well that were shared in the article, the London Centric article.
This really succeeded.
It really got to people.
So here's some screenshots of comments.
I thought we could maybe take turns reading out the TikTok outrage.
Yeah, I'll start.
They should give the English people that are homeless.
We are the asylum seekers nothing.
It's so wrong.
And then Reform UK 2025 responds.
The government thinks their little Mohammed will work one day and pay taxes.
Someone by the name of Michelle says, sort of like two like monkeys with closed eyes emoji.
Absolutely livid for homeless people crying emoji.
What must they be thinking?
Luke writes, don't landlords usually ask British tenants for references before letting out their property to them?
They get everything they deserve for this and their own greed.
Mr. T responds, and this gets cut off, so you'll just have to imagine this rant ongoing as it just gets quieter and quieter as you walk away.
Have you made sure it's conveniently located next to schools and parks?
They like that.
Also need some local shops to shoplift from, a bookmaker's clothes, and blah, You know, incoherent and so forth.
That's good subtle British rage that comes in the form of sarcasm.
Yeah.
Everybody on the British right seems to suddenly become a bleeding heart liberal when it comes to homeless people and poor people, only when they're talking about this specific topic about asylum seekers and refugees.
Do you know, like any other day of the year, if you're sort of talking about, you know, people who don't have enough to eat, people who can't afford to live, you know, they instantly start talking about, oh, well, it's really easy actually if you just make good choices.
You can just live off really, you know, live really cheaply.
Those people are just, they just, you know, want mobile phones and they're spending loads of tattoos and things like that.
But suddenly, suddenly, when it comes to talking about refugees and asylum seekers, suddenly then they can find it in their hearts to pity poor homeless people and poor, poor people who are British people who are being left behind by this.
I mean, it just, yeah, it drives me nuts.
Yeah, it's like they're like enraged by class until they look over to their left and then see race and they're like, whoa, that's better.
Access Premium Episodes00:01:02
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julia and the Nanny, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julia and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA.