In announcing new regulations to deal with asylum seekers, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has dragged the ‘Labour’ government to new depths. What Mahmood announced as policy on Monday could have been written in Conservative Central Office or in the headquarters of Reform UK. The new measures, introduced in panic because of the collapse in support for the government, will do nothing to shore up Starmer’s collapse, but it will increase support for Reform.
It is incredible – and an indication of their shallowness and complete lack of any political understanding – that right wing ‘Labour’ MPs really believe that draconian new asylum policies will turn things around for Labour in the polls. But why would a voter who is drifting towards Reform have second thoughts, when the Labour leadership have, in effect, accepted Nigel Farage’s agenda and have shifted political debate onto Reform territory. Why vote for a ‘phony’ Reform Party – Starmer’s Labour Party – when there is a real one available?
Shabana Mahmood complained to the House of Commons about the global increase in the movement of refugees, but she did this without uttering a single word – not one word – about the appalling economic and political conditions that force people to risk such moves. The severe economic dislocations, wars, repression and the threat of all three, those things that force people to move simply to try to have a future, these are off Mahmood’s radar altogether.
In many cases, it has been previous British governments which have had a direct role and responsibility for destabilising tens of millions of peoples’ lives in Africa and the Middle East. But these issues are a closed book to right wing Labour MPs whose economic outlook, lifestyle and political philosophy are indistinguishable for those of the MPs sitting opposite them.
Comfortable and well-off MPs
Comfortable and well-off MPs, including ‘Labour’ MPs, many of them regularly ‘gaming the system’ to enrich themselves and their families personally – again, including ‘Labour’ MPs – have the gall to suggest that it is the supposed lucrative benefits in the UK system that ‘pull’ refugees to these shores.
Communities Secretary, Steve Reed, suggested that it was “perverse incentives” in the current system, which were “encouraging families to cross the Channel in small boats”. We can’t go on like this, he told the BBC, “it is tearing the country apart in many respects.” What is “perverse” is for ‘Labour’ ministers to absolutely turn their face against the sheer desperation that makes refugees risk their lives and their children’s lives in small boats crossing the English Channel. It is the standard tactic of the Tories, Reform and the far right – heap blame on the victims.
While Labour peer, Alf Dubs – who was himself a child refugee from the Nazis in 1939 – described Mahmood’s proposals as “shabby”, the far right idiot, Tommy Robinson, welcomed them. “…Well done patriots,” he posted on social media.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said: “The home secretary’s immigration and asylum plans are cruel, divisive and fundamentally out of step with basic decency”. The measures, he said, will force refugees “into endless short-term applications, denying visas to partners and children and stripping away support for people who would otherwise be destitute will only deepen chaos, increase costs and hand greater power to people smugglers.”
Settled for nearly twenty years, but still might be deported
The net effect of the proposals will be to undermine any security in the lives of refugees, even when leave to remain has been granted. Whereas at present, indefinite leave to remain is granted after five years – and that is too long – it will now become twenty years.
That means that a refugee can be given asylum, can settle, raise a family and hold a job – paying income tax like everyone else – and after nineteen and a half years, it can be deemed that their former country is “safe”, meaning that they and their family have to leave. Entire families would be deported to a country with which the children have no personal connection.
Mahmood is offering two levels of asylum: two ‘routes’. The ‘basic’ level (“core protection”) offers minimal rights and anyone granted asylum under these conditions will not be allowed to bring their families. Mahmood and government spokespersons are quite explicit about this being an “incentive” not to come.
Slightly better opportunities in terms of “earning” a right to settle (the government’s word) await those given the new so-called a new “Work and Study Protection” route. But such a person can follow this “route” only “if they obtain employment or commence study at an appropriate level and pay a fee”. And the government makes it clear that “We will also deny support to those who have deliberately made themselves destitute”.
It is only a government minister – on £165,000 a year, plus expenses, (plus nearly £120,000 in donations to her office) – who can even think that anyone will make themselves “deliberately” destitute. What this means is that there will be a charter for super-exploitation by bad employers and rogue landlords. It will create a race to the bottom for those even on the ‘better’ Work and Study route. “Take this wage, or there’s no job. Pay this rent, or you’re out”.
Confiscating assets “convertible into cash”
Another sting in the tail, like some kind of throwback to the Nazi persecution of Jews, is the threat to confiscate assets of asylum seekers that might be “convertible into cash”, to pay for the administration of the system. Dark ‘jokes’ are circulating about jewellery, gold teeth and hair, but the point has to be made that these measures – from what purports to be a ‘Labour’ government – have opened the door to far more dangerous people, like Nigel Farage, to do a lot worse.
Mahmood boasted in the House of Commons that this government has significantly increased the deportation of ‘failed’ asylum seekers, 50,000 in the last year, she said. She also bragged about now Immigration Enforcement has hit record levels, with over 8,000 arrests in the last year.
She claims that these new measures have no effect on, for example, on EU citizens who already live in the UK and have indefinite leave to remain. But having opened the door to much greater persecution of migrants, there will be nothing to stop a Farage government walking right through it and making life far, far worse for anyone with dark skin or a foreign accent.
Around a third of NHS doctors and nurses are non-UK citizens. The figure for those working in the care sector is probably higher. All of these workers will be potential victims if there is a Farage government which would happily pursue with more vigour the policies being road-tested by a ‘Labour’ Home Secretary.
As Alf Dubs said, the Mahmood policy will not reduce social tensions over migration; more people staying only on a temporary basis for longer, will increase tensions. “If people are here temporarily, and people know they’re here temporarily,” Dubs said, “then the danger is that local people say, well, you’re only here for a bit, why should we help you to integrate? Why should your kids go to local schools? And so on.” The measures, in other words, will significantly increase the sense of fear and insecurity for all people of colour and foreign-born workers.
But in additions, these measures will do two other things. Firstly, they will increase – not decrease – support for Reform and the far right. When a ‘Labour’ Home Secretary uses exactly the same tone and words of a dangerous political opponent, it does not undermine that opponent, it vindicates them, and that will become apparent in the polls in the coming weeks.
But secondly, Mahmood’s new vindictive anti-asylum policies will increase the turmoil in the Labour Party. Most members will find these measures utterly abhorrent and many will leave. Even MPs traditionally seen as right wing, like Stella Creasey, are up in arms over Monday’s announcement. Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich South has offered to give up his own parliamentary seat for Andy Burnham, so he can be elected and challenge Starmer.
Right wing trade union leaders bear a major responsibility
The leaders of three of the biggest affiliated unions – UNISON, GMB and Usdaw – have backed the Starmer project from the beginning. They bear a major responsibility for the plight the Labour Party is in today. If they are not prepared by now to throw their considerable weight against Starmer and the general trajectory of this government, then they can no claim any legitimacy. In which case inside those unions as well as in the Party, the left will need to fight against those who pretend to ‘lead’, but who have mis-used and abused the ‘Labour’ title.
We have said many times that the only justification there is today for remaining in the Labour Party is to participate in a determined and relentless campaign to drive out the right-wing cabal who have captured high office. What is true of membership is also true of trade unions and any other affiliated organisations.
The Guardian sketch writer, John Crace, wrote a darkly humorous piece on Shababa Mahmood, with the title, “No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. Imagining at some point in the future, he had Mahmood deporting herself. Her alter ego tells her, “We can’t have you hanging around here when the country your parents emigrated from is perfectly safe”. But what was written as a bad joke could also be interpreted as a warning, because that is precisely the kind of policy favoured by the far right. And history will show that it was Shabana Mahmood who set the ball rolling.
[Feature photograph is screenshot of BBC coverage of House of Commons]
