Shabana Mahmood is not messing about. She knows that the job she was handed in September crushes careers. Therefore she intends to take the biggest swing she can at the toughest challenge on her desk as early as possible.
Just 73 days since arriving at the Home Office, she has announced what her department describes as “the biggest change to the asylum system since the Second World War”.
There are several pillars to her plan. But the element raising the most eyebrows is her decision to go into battle on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). While the convention is a totem for many in her party – who will deny that it is a problem of any kind – the Home Secretary has evidently concluded that she cannot get the job done without sorting out its malfunctions.
That particularly relates to the ways in which recent interpretations of the ECHR obstruct deportation. By some estimates, around two- hirds of successful appeals against deportation do so under Article 8, the right to a family life – often arguing that it would be a breach of rights for someone’s spouse or parent to be deported.
Infamously, in 2024 a convicted criminal’s deportation to Albania was blocked after the First-Tier Tribunal ruled that it would breach the rights of his wife and child, despite his wife having the right to stay in the UK and the capacity to care for their child, and the language skills and family ties to follow him to Albania if she wished to do that instead. The verdict was overturned on appeal, at which point the Upper Tribunal noted that “the single example” provided in the original decision “of why [his child] could not go to Albania” was that they “will not eat the type of chicken nuggets that are available abroad”.
Quite reasonably, Mahmood does not think that a law which delays the deportation of foreign criminals on such flimsy grounds is functioning properly. Nor do such cases quite bear out the rhetoric that we often hear about the ECHR having been embedded with the values of Winston Churchill. The modern interpretation of the convention is currently dysfunctional, and the Home Secretary wants to fix it.
In doing so, she is setting up two epic battles. The first will be with her own back benches, as she will have to legislate in order to make these changes. The second will be with the cohort of lawyers – some former colleagues of the Prime Minister – who have waged endless lawfare using human rights legislation against successive British governments in recent years.
Mahmood evidently doesn’t mind a fight. Indeed, it seems she appreciates the political value in taking on both the more dogmatic end of her own party and the most obstructive wing of the legal profession, both of whom are out of step with public opinion on the matter.
That only works, of course, if she wins on both counts.
While a number of Labour MPs have already publicly criticised her proposals, and the Government has form in recent months for failing to whip its vote on key legislation, the majority will surely get behind her if the alternative is to surrender the ground entirely to Reform. Her case is pragmatism over dogma: “Unless we act, we risk losing popular consent for having an asylum system at all.”
When the fight moves from Parliament to the courtroom, the Home Office evidently takes heart from Denmark’s example. They aren’t innovating or busking it; they’re pursuing a policy already working in a modern, European, ECHR-signatory peer nation.
While copy-pasting the Danish policy may be relatively straightforward, it remains to be seen whether legislating to refocus judicial interpretation of the convention will be so easy. It seems highly likely that there will be legal challenges brought forward to poke holes in Mahmood’s new framework as soon as it is introduced.
Will it work? The Government must hope so, even more than the rest of us. The alternative is a re-run of David Cameron’s ill-fated EU renegotiation.
Your next read
square LIONEL BARBER Who broke Britain?David Cameron: The unlikely villain who casually killed the Conservative Party
square JAMES BALLMaga is firmly in charge of Trump now
square SARAH BAXTERTrump may not make it to 2028 with his health intact
square IAN BIRRELLReeves is flailing – but she is a symbol of a deeper rot in Westminster
A government which agrees a system is malfunctioning sets out to reform it, as a rebuttal to those who say we should leave altogether. If that reform succeeds, then great. High-fives all round, and back to the pavilion for an early bath.
If it doesn’t, and by the time of the next election the clash between the ECHR and effective border control is still unresolved, then Labour will have publicly and powerfully strengthened the case to quit the convention.
The Home Secretary has no choice but to try, and she has a better, more robust and more complete plan to do so than many of her predecessors. The ground around her office is strewn with the careers and reputations of others who held the post before her, and she has no desire to join them. The fight of her life is under way.
Hence then, the article about labour isn t ready for the consequences of its radical new asylum policy was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Labour isn’t ready for the consequences of its radical new asylum policy )
Also on site :
- The ’80s Hair Metal Classic That Became Too Big for MTV
- Karen Carpenter Reportedly Disliked This 1975 Carpenters Hit So Much She Refused to Perform It
- '80s Hard Rock Band Announces Massive 2026 Tour With Iconic Special Guest