The new asylum proposals outlined by the Home Secretary are not driven by humanity, fairness or even economics. They are driven by political cowardice.
For weeks, briefings have been issued talking up how “tough” the new proposals from Shabana Mahmood would be. We’ve heard they will include plans to end permanent asylum altogether; to introduce a new 20-year wait to secure indefinite leave to remain for those claiming asylum; and to seize jewellery and assets from small boat migrants to help pay for accommodation.
Imagine you’re an asylum seeker, perhaps fleeing the civil war in Sudan. A few months ago, you returned home to find your family slaughtered. You rescued some cash and belongings and fled, hoping for a better life. Given you have a cousin in the UK, you decide to seek sanctuary – but at the border there’s Shabana Mahmood, sponsored by Cash Converters, ready to prise your dead mother’s belongings from you.
When Keir Starmer ran to be Labour leader in 2020, he pledged to “defend migrants’ rights” and to have “an immigration system based on compassion and dignity”. How far he has fallen: not just in the polls but morally, too.
Now, we find ourselves in a position where Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage are celebrating the asylum policies of a Labour Government, with the latter posting that “the Home Secretary sounds like a Reform supporter”. The Home Secretary does little to assuage such sentiment, when she is reported to be inspired by President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has overseen the ICE raids and deportations in the US. This is a victory for racists and bigots.
Last Friday, Mahmood’s underling, Home Office minister Mike Tapp, posted on X: “Deport, deport, deport”, boasting of Labour’s achievements at deporting people and how they would go further still.
All Labour is achieving is reinforcing their opponents’ framing of asylum as a problem to be stopped and of asylum seekers as criminals (why else should the state be able to imprison them, steal from them and deport them?). Unsurprisingly, this did not satiate the Tories or Reform, who said they would go further, while welcoming Labour’s proposals which will pave the way.
For Labour, it will only increase divisions within the party – both in Parliament and at the grassroots – and accelerate the drift of Labour voters to the Greens, Lib Dems and others.
Already, the backlash has united those seen as centrists like Stella Creasy and “soft left” MPs like Sarah Owen with the left of the party, and those from the new intake, like Tony Vaughan and Simon Opher, often dubbed “Starmtroopers” for supposedly being selected in the leader’s image.
There is a sensible, fair and humane system that could be implemented, one that could win the support of the British public, but it would need to be explained and argued for. People whipping up hate and division would need to be confronted, not pandered to.
A rational debate about asylum has to start with why so many people are fleeing their homes. The United Nations says the world has record numbers of people displaced. Most are displaced within their own country or in neighbouring countries. Turkey (bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria) currently has more refugees than any other country on Earth.
The UK has played a large role in destabilising that region: starting wars, extending bombing campaigns and arming authoritarian regimes. We are not solely to blame, but our far-from-ethical foreign policy sees British weapons currently brutalising innocents from Sudan to Palestine.
We have a responsibility to stop funding conflict, but instead we are cutting international aid and continuing arms exports and political support for dictatorships and warmongers. The UK currently receives fewer asylum applications than Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
We need to do more to integrate asylum seekers quickly – that means allowing them to work, if they’re able, to support themselves – and providing language and health support for those who currently cannot. That would reduce the numbers in hotels and help to integrate people into British society.
The last Tory government cut ESOL funding – free English lessons for those whose first language isn’t English – and then they complain that people aren’t integrating. Although it criticised the cut in opposition, Labour has not restored it.
A new report from academics at the London School of Economics to be launched this week shows that such an approach could save the Government 40 per cent on asylum costs, as well as providing extra revenues for the Treasury through the tax revenues generated.
The researchers find that “every £1 invested in English language classes and employment support from day one of arrival results in £9 in increased salary”, with commensurate benefits for public finances.
Instead, Mahmood is erecting barriers to integration: taking away routes to becoming a British citizen and leaving already traumatised people in limbo. Why bother putting down roots and integrating if you know you could be whisked off at any second on a minister’s arbitrary judgement that your country is now safe?
Like so many government policies in recent years, Mahmood’s proposals should be seen less as practical policy and more as positioning: the accelerating descent of our politics into a media spectacle, rather than as a means of building a better society.
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Mahmood’s tough rhetoric and talk of asset-seizing, deportation and removal of rights will not wash with the public. Those keen to demonise refugees will continue to opt for those who have consistently advocated racist policies, while she will alienate her own natural supporters, who believe Labour should be better than that.
We stand on the precipice of very grim times. It’s time to stand up for the values of compassion, humanity and just basic fairness – even if this Labour Government won’t.
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