Dear John,
After Keir Starmer’s infamous “Island of Strangers” speech – in which he claimed that mass migration was dividing Britain – the Prime Minister quickly apologised. “It wasn’t right to use that phrase,” he said. “I deeply regret using it.”
Yet now, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s recently announced asylum overhaul hinges on quite similar justifications. “Illegal migration is making this country a more divided place,” she claims.
Once more, the Government seems to be embracing that ‘Blue Labour’ strategy: chasing right-wing immigration policy and trying to appease the notoriously unappeasable.
How hardline are these new proposals? Well, Tommy Robinson claimed victory for “obliterating the Overton Window”, and Nigel Farage called Mahmood’s plans “an audition to join Reform.” Many of those who have made their careers by jumping and waving about migrants seem excited.
Mahmood calls it “the most sweeping reform to the asylum system in modern times.” It’s designed to:
Deter asylum seekers from coming here by making the system “tougher” (crueller) and attaining long-term residency harder (based on the low-evidence idea that refugees fleeing war are cynically looking to take advantage of Britain’s social safety net).
Make it easier to deport them (by restricting appeals processes and re-interpreting crucial protections in the European Convention of Human Rights – you know, that same thing that Reform and the Conservatives are always going on about).
And finally, creating a select few “safe and legal” migration routes, which the Home Secretary said yesterday will be capped at a “few hundred” people.
Mahmood assures us that this has nothing to do with the consistent polling lead of Reform UK. She told the Commons last night – in response to warnings about chasing Reform UK – "I'm sorry to find that the Reform Party is [living] rent-free in so many people's heads, I can assure you it's nowhere near mine.”
But Mahmood is known to be a favourite of both Downing Street Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney and Lord Maurice Glasman – both key proponents of the ‘Blue Labour’ approach. It’s an approach that very much has Reform UK living rent-free in their heads – so much so they’ve forgotten to question the basic assumptions of its arguments.
It’s a strategy that treats fear of others as a fixed feature of the electorate rather than something that media and politicians have created – or as something they can challenge. It assumes our future must be negotiated on terms set by those who see immigration as the only relevant issue in any given debate (and plainly, are not always operating in good faith).
And it quietly shifts the centre of political gravity toward ever more punitive policies, measures that were never part of the democratic mandate this government was elected on.
This isn’t about Shabana Mahmood’s identity or migrant background (which she invoked to defend her policies). Nor is it about who extremists consider “really English.”
It is about whether our politics is being shaped by the loudest voices of division, or by the democratic values that the vast majority of us still believe in: fairness, truthfulness, and the basic human dignity of every person.
If Britain feels more divided, it’s not because desperate people are seeking safety here. It’s because those in power keep wielding division as a political tool.
