Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood could just save Labour from electoral oblivion – if her party’s backbenchers let her.
On Monday, Mahmood told Parliament she plans to quadruple the length of time asylum seekers wait for permanent settlement to 20 years. There will be reviews of refugee status every 30 months, with people returned if their home countries have become safe. Jewellery could be confiscated to help migrants pay their way.
Labour backbencher Stella Creasy branded the measures “performatively cruel”. Her colleague, Simon Opher, said they are “wrong and cruel”. Labour MP Sarah Owen said “a strong immigration system doesn’t need to be a cruel one”, while another backbencher Richard Burgon remarked: “This approach isn’t just morally wrong; it’s politically disastrous”.
While they may be satisfying their consciences, these Labour MPs are not looking at the bigger picture. Migration has consistently topped the list of voters’ concerns since May.
Mahmood is borrowing from Denmark’s Social Democrats who achieved the unthinkable for a left-leaning mainstream European party. Rejecting openness to migration, they favoured higher taxes to fund public services. It worked: reducing asylum applications to the lowest number in 40 years and securing the party’s electoral survival. The measures even saw off the political threat from the far right.
Labour is already gearing up to present the next general election as a Reform vs Labour fight. Anything less than next-to-zero illegal migration in the run-up to 2029 and Labour will already have lost.
But critics of the strategy say it damaged Denmark’s reputation for respecting international humanitarian law and the rights of asylum seekers. Some of Labour’s backbenchers certainly don’t want to see themselves that way.
In Westminster, Mahmood’s critics were quick to rally. Rather than keeping quiet as Labour rattles from one crisis to another, its backbenchers now see attacking the leadership as open season. It’s already influencing Budget decisions.
And no wonder, when it’s proving successful. What’s the Labour equivalent of tossing red meat to Tory backbenchers? Undercooked tofu? Keir Starmer has spent the last fortnight tossing economic tofu to the left of his party.
Despite arguing for the last two years that the UK can’t afford to compensate Waspi women for their pensions or pay child benefit to larger families, these policies are apparently suddenly affordable. It’s now open season.
If Mahmood has leadership ambitions of her own – and she’s been very careful in public after last week’s own goal from No 10 – she can’t afford to annoy the progressives in the Labour movement who would pick the next leader.
The recent Plaid Cymru victory in Caerphilly and the Greens’ rising poll numbers are being anxiously watched by Labour MPs nervous of their left flank.
They’re the same people who fret migrants won’t be allowed to integrate if they’re looking over their shoulders at being deported, or those who feel queasy at confiscating jewellery to help fund their stay.
But Mahmood – along with her ally, No 10 Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney – both understand this is a battle much wider than convincing leftist members of the Labour Party. They have got to get migrant numbers down. It’s as simple as that.
On constituency doorsteps, every weekend, voters tell their Labour MPs they just want the problem of small boats fixed – never mind the details. “They say, ‘I voted for you to fix it, now sort it out,’” a Labour backbencher said, reporting details of one such conversation in their constituency.
Meanwhile, some Labour MPs don’t recognise a failure to halt the boats is existential to the party’s survival. Voters may be seriously flirting with Reform, they argue, but Labour is also haemorrhaging votes to the left.
Cue crowing from Reform’s Richard Tice. Mahmood is “beginning to sound like she’s putting in an application for vetting to join Reform”, he told a Monday Westminster news conference. “The reality is, however well-intentioned, the Home Secretary hasn’t got the support and confidence of her own party.”
At first glance, some of the measures announced by Mahmood look pretty tough. Borrowing from Donald Trump-style visa sanctions passed into law by the Conservatives, Mahmood said the UK will bar the entry of people from Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo if their governments do not rapidly improve co-operation on removals.
But the Home Secretary is going nowhere near as far as Reform by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and repealing the Human Rights Act.
Mahmood instead intends to change judges’ interpretation of ECHR Article 8 – “the right to a family life” – limiting it to parents or children, with a presumption for judges to put public safety and national interests in controlling illegal immigration first.
However, she has backed away from unilateral reforms to Article 3, which protects against inhuman and degrading treatment. That’s increasingly used by foreign criminals to block their removal, based on arguments such as inferior prison conditions in their home countries. Instead, she is working with international allies to change its interpretation.
Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, warned the plans to change how human rights legislation is interpreted would be “limited” because of the ECHR restrictions. It also allowed Tice to also claim Mahmood “won’t be able to deliver” her plans.
Labour MPs and the progressive left should worry about what comes next. With no human rights at all, detonating the ECHR and Human Rights Act would allow Reform to sink the dinghies once they entered British waters. That could do far more damage to Britain’s international reputation.
And, despite the mithering on the back benches, Cabinet colleagues are full of praise for Mahmood. “She sees through bullshit very fast,” one told The i Paper recently. “Charming, but you don’t mess,” another said of her a few months ago.
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The migration strategy certainly worked in Denmark. Mette Frederiksen remains as Social Democratic Party leader and prime minister. She also saw off a threat from the populist nationalist Danish People’s Party at the European Parliament elections last year.
Time is running out for this Government to bring down the numbers of migrants. Mahmood’s MP colleagues won’t thank her now, as their consciences revolt. They probably won’t even thank her if her plan works and she saves some backbenchers from oblivion at the next election.
For Labour to stand even a chance come 2029, Mahmood needs to ignore her internal critics. Winning the argument with the country is the priority, getting the boat crossings down more crucial still.
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