Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans to tighten immigration legislation reek of racism and anti-Muslim bigotry, says Darren Lewis
Shabana Mahmood says Farage can ‘sod off’ during Sky News interview
Shabana Mahmood is every shallow person you’ve ever met whose true colours emerge once you immerse them in money or power.
And when Labour finally lose their grip on power at the next election, the chapter on Shabana’s contribution will be substantial.
As a backbencher, the MP for Birmingham Ladywood was filmed staging a pro-Palestine protest outside a Sainsbury’s in Birmingham in 2014.
As Home Secretary she has sided with the government on anti-protest laws. As a backbencher, Shabana voted against a stricter asylum system.
As Home Secretary she used herself as a human shield to defend Sir Keir Starmer after the Prime Minister claimed in a speech that immigration was in danger of leaving the UK as “an island of strangers”.
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Shabana brings to mind the legendary Groucho Marx quote: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.”
Now we are seeing some of them as she repackages the hard-right immigration reforms of her ex-Tory counterparts Priti Patel and Suella Braverman and the rabid extremists at Reform.
She intends to seize valuable personal assets from asylum seekers, potentially including jewellery such as wedding rings and keepsakes, to meet the £8 million daily cost of hotel accommodations. This column doesn’t need to tell you what that reminds you of.
Alex Norris, the Border, Security and Asylum Minister, sounded more like a Reform representative as he blustered around that particular proposal on Sky News on Monday morning.
Shabana wants to replace indefinite leave to remain with temporary two and a half-year protection status, renewable only if home countries remain unsafe.
And she wants to retain the ability to deport asylum seekers once stability returns, while creating capped legal routes for genuine refugees.
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The plans reek of racism and anti-Muslim bigotry. They are measures she’d never have put her name to when she was sat in the cheap seats.
They are an utter, shameful betrayal of the struggles her own immigrant parents – and millions of others – endured simply to live a normal life and create the conditions for her to dream as big as she has done.
But then the intoxicating mix of power and status will do that to you. Her hijab-wearing days of demanding a “general amnesty” for “undocumented workers”, as shown in a viral social media video on Monday, are long behind her.
Nor will Shabana be spotted in her constituency anytime soon after selling out a district which is 70 percent non-white. She doesn’t dare to show her face.
Locals saw through her insincerity over Gaza last year and an independent candidate slashed her majority by 88%.
Her current proposals have sparked rebellion from nine Labour MPs who have denounced them as a betrayal of humanitarian values.
Shabana doesn’t care. Not now that she’s hit the big time. Nor do the government ministers who will defend her disgraceful policies and rhetoric over the coming days.
They could easily have spelt out the facts that you already know. But they won’t. So this column will. Again.
There are currently no legal routes into this country for those wishing to claim asylum”. The Tory government closed them off in 2022 in order to frame everyone arriving here as an illegal.
The 1951 Refugee Convention means anyone can seek asylum from persecution in other countries.
Most asylum seekers head to the country closest to them. Anyone who tells you they are instantly receiving anything other than the bare minimum in terms of support – or three, four or five-star accommodation rather than a bed in a basic repurposed hotel is not giving you the full, correct picture.
Starmer, Mahmood, could easily lean into these truths but she and her colleagues will instead alienate millions and send Labour into oblivion at the next election.
Add it to their betrayal over the winter fuel allowance cuts, disability benefit cuts, military spending, doctors and nurses’ pay and so much else and they are already in the abyss.
They just don’t realise it.
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