Shabana Mahmood's plan to protect ethnic minorities by hurting them

Last week British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a package of cruel asylum reforms. Refugees will have temporary status and will be required to reapply to remain in Britain every two and a half years. Trapped in this state of insecurity, they will have to wait a ludicrous twenty years before they can apply for permanent settlement. As a result of these changes British born children will be deported and migrants will be rendered homeless.

While defending her decisions Mahmood has made some very odd and very weak arguments. She’s also told some straight up lies. Let’s debunk them:

We have become the destination of choice in Europe

This is flatly untrue. The government’s own statistics place us 5th in Europe for asylum applications, behind France, Italy and Spain. Germany receive more than twice as many applications as we do. Adjusted for population we place 17th among our former EU partners: the bottom half of the table.

While some are genuine refugees, others are economic migrants, seeking to take advantage of the asylum system.

Mahmood downplays the legitimacy of asylum seekers’ claims here. In reality 47% of asylum claims are approved on first decision and a further 48% are approved on appeal. The appeal success rate has been steadily increasing (up from 29% in 2010) because the Home Office incentivise staff to prioritise decision quantity over quality. Staff also report being pressured to refuse claims, resulting in bad faith decisions that are frequently overturned on appeal.

Even amongst those who are genuine refugees, economic incentives are at play.

This isn’t an argument, it’s a smear. Mahmood is holding refugees to a standard of purity and perfect victimhood that she doesn’t hold anybody else to. It reminds me of the Matt Bors comic panel in which a medieval peasant says “We should improve society somewhat” while a man replies, “Yet you participate in society! Curious! I am very intelligent.”

I know that some of these measures will face opposition. But this is a moral mission for me. I know that a country without secure borders is a less safe country for those who look like me.

Now we reach the heart of Mahmood’s argument: her “story”. Without it, her crackdown might seem immoral or unjust, so it’s vital that we believe it. “This isn’t us tacking towards public opinion, we really believe it,” says one Mahmood ally. They protest a little too much I think. I’m old enough to remember when Mahmood called for a “general amnesty” for “undocumented workers” already in the UK.

Doubters like me don’t bother Mahmood. She’s too busy wielding her story to silence her critics. Take this response to a Liberal Democrat who suggested her new policy measures were “unnecessary and cruel”.

Unlike the hon. Gentleman, unfortunately, I am the one who is regularly called a “fucking Paki” and told to “Go back home”. I know through personal experience just how divisive the issue of asylum has become in our country.

Mahmood contents that unless the government turns more people away at the borders, the country risks being torn apart by rising racism. And that unless you experience racism, you have no right to critique racist policy.

Notice how she doesn’t frame racism as inherently wrong; rather, as a proclivity of the natives that surfaces when we give too many rights to too many immigrants. Racism is natural. Refugees are the aberration.

There’s [also] a link between domestic violence and football matches, but I would hope that the home secretary is not going to suggest that Thomas Tuchel has “a moral mission” to lead England to World Cup glory next summer because otherwise men are going to start beating up their spouses or their children. I would hope that the home secretary — the cabinet minister in charge of enforcing the law — would take the view that domestic violence is always wrong.

Mahmood is merely the latest in a long line of black and brown ministers appointed to launder racist policies. I’ve received a lot of pushback for pointing this out, and those people are right to be angry: reducing Mahmood to her identity downplays her professional achievements. It’s irresponsible and, in many cases, it’s racist and misogynistic. My critics anger is misplaced though. It’s not me doing it, Labour Party figures admitted it when they appointed her.

She is the perfect choice for Home Secretary. She’s as hard as nails on immigration. But she’s a Muslim woman. The Left won’t know how to attack her.

This level of cynicism isn’t surprising. It’s long been clear that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party only care about bigotry insofar as it can be leveraged to their political ends. For example, when Starmer commissioned an independent report on racism and factionalism in his party, he talked it up because he intended to use it to smear the left-wing of his party. But when the report indicted his own faction, he threatened legal action against its black author.

Since taking office Starmer has lurched even further to the right and even started paraphrasing Enoch Powell in his speeches. This electoral tactic won’t work: polls show that the government’s attempt to mimic the anti-migrant politics of Nigel Farage is a recipe for defeat, as well as moral degradation.

Likewise, Mahmood’s approval rating has taken a dive since her recent policy announcement. She should have seen this coming. Who was the least popular member of Boris Johnson’s government? It was Pritti Patel. Who was the least popular member of Rishi Sunak’s government? Suella Braverman. Left-wing voters don’t like politicians who admit they would have deported their own parents, while bigots want to see these brown women deported regardless of their politics. Mahmood’s formulation appeals to almost nobody.

I say almost because, having packaged her racist reforms in anti-racist language and conscripted people who “look like” her, I’m sure she’ll garner some support. It isn’t unusual for migrant descendant groups to support more stringent border controls. I still very much doubt it’ll be enough to save her seat. She’s already seen her majority slashed from 28,582 to 3,421 thanks to her support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

All indicators suggest that Labour’s attempt to out-Reform Reform is both doomed to fail and destined to worsen racism in the country. So why do they persist?

The strategic wager of the Starmerites is that, if they can turn the next election into a starkly binary choice, we’ll all come crawling back to them. A key cabinet member recently admitted as much:

The real fight will be the centre-left versus the Reform right.

And Mahmood recently reiterated this threat:

If you don’t like this, you won’t like what follows me.

In other words, if you don’t embrace my policies then Reform will win the next election and you’ll hate their policies even more. Her pitch to voters is that the only way to avoid getting what they really don’t want, is to vote for something else that they also don’t want.

This is why Labour oppose proportional representation against the stated wishes of MPs, the general public, and Labour delegates. It’s a protection racket, and a dangerous game for a party polling in fourth place to be playing. In the selfish pursuit of power Mahmood is effectively blackmailing every ethnic minority Briton, and everybody who cares about them. Even worse: she’s going to lose.