Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has promised to get-tough on illegal immigration but the plan is doomed to fail for one simple reason, says Giles Sheldrick.
Shabana Mahmood has promised to get tough on illegal immigration after a public outcry (Image: Getty)
Labour’s pretence that it is now a party tough on illegal immigration and asylum will stick in the craw for many.
The party has long rolled out the red carpet to those with no genuine right to be here which is why more than a few eyebrows were raised when Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said illegal migration is “tearing our country apart”.
Well, yes, minister. Full marks for observation!
So the latest wheeze to make the Kent coast less attractive to tens of thousands of people beating a path here is to grant temporary asylum and remove individuals as soon as their home countries are deemed safe.
It is a plan plagiarised from Denmark, which has one of Europe’s toughest set of rules for refugees, but has little to do with deterring those hellbent on making it here. Primarily because Ms Mahmood’s “ramping up of the removal and deportation of illegal migrants” won’t happen.
Labour has had plenty of chances to demonstrate it is serious about an issue – the issue – that dominates the political landscape.
It campaigned on a manifesto pledge to scrap the Conservative’s Rwanda deportation scheme and, immediately after winning the general election, Sir Keir Starmer declared the “gimmick” was “dead and buried”.
Make no mistake this isn’t about getting tough, with Labour suddenly finding its teeth, it’s to try and counter the seemingly unstoppable surge of Reform UK.
The latest Hokey Cokey comes hot on the heels of Labour’s “one in one out policy” – for each person returned to France, the UK accepts someone with a case for protection as a refugee who has not attempted to cross the Channel. It has proved a farce.
And it also serves as a timely and convenient distraction from a shambolic and stuttering government about to unleash untold misery on voters at the Budget.
It is doomed to fail for one reason.
PM Sir Keir Starmer labelled Reform’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain racist (Image: Getty)
So far this year almost 40,000 have arrived on small boats from France. And these are the ones the authorities are aware of.
Under current UK rules, those granted refugee status have it for five years and can then apply for indefinite leave to remain and, possibly, a route to citizenship. Ms Mahmood wants to extend this to 20 years.
Additionly, she wants every refugee’s status to be reviewed every 30 months. And those whose countries become safe – whatever that means – will be removed.
But the plan does little to smash the crime cartels facilitating small boat crossings in the first place, or deter the appetite of illegal migrants paying them to traverse the Channel. In fact, it risks driving those already here, or planning to come, further underground to operate in Britian’s burgeoning black economy.
To give you some idea of how far the pendulum has swung in Britain, Labour will try to introduce a new law to force judges to put public safety above the rights of illegal migrants and foreign criminals when considering removal.
But the Government cannot decide what is a safe country. It is not in its gift all the time the UK remains tied to the European Convention on Human Rights which it incorporates into law through the Human Rights Act.
The army of human rights activists and lawyers to whom Labour is attached at the hip will ultimately arbitrate on what constitutes safe. And is Labour really going to challenge the Supreme Court? Of course not.
Only weeks ago an increasingly desperate government was reduced to labelling Nigel Farage’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain as racist and immoral.
The Reform UK leader’s policy could effectively see hundreds of thousands of people, here legally, being thrown out the front door. It is deeply controversial but appears hugely popular with a fed-up electorate.
Since 2018 more than 160,000 illegal immigrants (many of whom make a claim for asylum) have attempted to enter the UK after crossing on small boats.
On Ms Mahmood’s first day in the job more than 1,000 migrants made the very same journey.
It seems extraordinary she is now undertaking a “moral mission because illegal migration is tearing our country apart”.
In what at first blush seems to be an awakening, Ms Mahmood has parroted what millions across the UK have been screaming for years: that the border security shambles is dividing communities because those who flout the rules and abuse the system can and do get away with it.
In her Road to Damascus epiphany she states she is “not willing to stand by and pretend there isn’t a problem when I know there is one”.
It will surely leave some wondering where these words were 17 months ago.
