Shabana Mahmood versus the Labour Party Her own side is holding her back

Main-stage events at the party conferences can sometimes feel like a damp squib: a vast space, a Cabinet minister at the podium, and only a smattering of regional councillors and incurable political nerds to witness it. Shabana Mahmood’s appearance in Liverpool yesterday was no such occasion. Hacks and lobbyists jostled to get into a packed-out arena, surrounded by scores of eager members. The new Home Secretary’s address on immigration controls, much trailed in the press, was delayed by several minutes, and Starmerites, Burnham Babes and Labour lifers were all eager to hear her speak. What Mahmood does with her brief may be key to how the Government sees off the threat from Nigel Farage — without sacrificing the party’s founding principles.

You see, Mahmood isn’t just Home Secretary: as she was so keen to remind conference-goers, she’s a Labour home secretary. Twice during her speech she put special emphasis on her party’s name, lest anyone close their eyes and think they were listening to Theresa May or Suella Braverman. And, by the standards of a senior Labour politician, this was a surprising speech. 

The main focus was the Government’s changes to “indefinite leave to remain” (ILR) rules for migrants, the qualifying period for which will now be increased from five years to 10. Earlier this month, Reform UK pledged, if elected, to scrap ILR entirely, forcing migrants to re-apply for visas every five years. The radicalism of this proposal allowed Keir Starmer — himself compared to Enoch Powell by portions of the British Left — to cast Farage as “racist” and “immoral”. During a separate fringe event last night, Mahmood referred to the policy as “much worse than racism”. Indeed, Reform’s announcement was in some ways a gift to the Home Secretary, who could outline a Labour policy which is certainly robust, but which nonetheless takes a more humane approach to questions of migration.

“Open, tolerant, generous”: that was the Home Secretary’s pitch for what the UK has to offer newcomers, and that is only possible if stronger policies are introduced for protecting the country’s borders. Thanks to Conservative policies, she said, “the scale and the speed of change as well as the nature of [immigration] has frayed trust and eroded public confidence”. She added: “We need a system that is fair to people who are already here. That means cracking down on illegal working that undercuts British workers.”

But this outwardly nationalist rhetoric had its limits. If she fails in her task to stop the boats and bring down net migration, Mahmood’s Liverpool address may come to be remembered as the “Little England” speech. Surveying the crowd, she expressed her “belief in a greater Britain, not a littler England”, a line which received the heartiest round of applause of the whole speech. That response from the audience — which also cheered Mahmood’s references to her second-generation immigrant background, as well her drive-by attacks on the open-borders maniacs of the last Tory ministry — showed an enthusiasm for immigration hawkishness only if it was tempered by liberal caveats. The crowd held its collective breath when she began to criticise migrant hotels, then exhaled when she described them as “that totem of the Tory legacy”. Clearly, Labour’s conference-goers may not be ready for full-fat Mahmood. 

Labour insiders had tipped Mahmood for the Home Office for several months before her elevation was hastened by Angela Rayner’s resignation from the deputy leadership. That reshuffle, early in September, gave Starmer an opportunity to bring in a tough minister to bring down both legal and illegal immigration — a task which successive governments have made seem impossible. Mahmood doesn’t deal in half measures. Last summer, in the wake of rioting across Britain, the then-Justice Secretary warned that “thugs and hooligans” would “feel the full force of the law”. A fortnight ago, she made the very same threat to Unite the Kingdom protestors who used violence against police officers. Speaking yesterday, she vowed to go after shoplifters in a vaguely Bolshevik-sounding “winter of action”.  And after she oversaw, as justice secretary, the early release of thousands of prisoners, which might have led to the resignation of a less capable minister, she turned it into an opportunity to abolish shorter sentences.

In doing so, she aimed to strengthen Labour’s appeal to the voters who are deserting the party. British electoral politics, across the spectrum, typically functions as a quest to win over swing voters who are in parts economically Left-wing, socially conservative, patriotic, and tough on crime. In its pithiest form, this worldview is summarised as: “Hang the paedos, fund the NHS.” Many of the Britons occupying this sweet spot would once have voted for Labour, but are now drawn to a Reform UK message which is tailored towards the disaffected working class. Mahmood, who settled for merely chemically castrating sex offenders during her time in the Justice Department, is viewed by prominent figures within Labour as the party’s best answer to this conundrum. Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour and an influence on Government strategists including Morgan McSweeney, has labelled Mahmood as “clearly the leader of our part of the party”.

Conscious of her role in the fight against Reform, Mahmood argued in her Liverpool speech that “working people will turn away from us — the party that for over a hundred years has been their party — and seek solace in the false promises of Farage”. The Right-wingers in teal aren’t even the most serious threat to national stability, in her eyes: at the beginning of her address she highlighted that when 150,000 people marched through London earlier this month, “they did so under the banner of a convicted criminal and a former BNP member”. In other words, this wasn’t an attempt to “unite the Kingdom” but the desperate howl of the Little Englander. 

There was once a time, as recently as the mid-20th century, when to be a “Little Englander” was not a sign of xenophobic small-mindedness but instead of progressive opposition to the British Empire. That it is now a universal term of derision is reflective of how thoroughly more middle-class, metropolitan sections of the centre-left have come to dominate the Labour Party. In her speech, Mahmood stated that hers is “a patriotism that speaks but does not feel the need to shout”. That may well be true of many Britons of all political stripes, but the fact remains that Labour is now well behind in the polls to an insurgent movement which is only too happy to shout its patriotism from the rafters. 

Rather than drawing distinctions between its national plan and the pitfalls of being a Little Englander, Starmer’s party should do more to appeal to this group, which is still resolutely insular. Mahmood said in Liverpool that “where a nation is fearful, it turns inwards. When we feel safe, we can look outwards” — yet her speech was still given with one eye firmly on the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), whose range of views on immigration tends to be narrower than that of voters. In response, a Reform press release stated that “her speechwriters may have toughened her rhetoric, but the Home Secretary’s speech won’t wash with the public”.

There are other issues where the position of Labour MPs and members is out of kilter with the public as a whole. Though a small majority of Britons support remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), there are more who think that the treaty should be reformed (35%) than left as it is (28%). Yet while the Home Secretary has made positive noises about reforming the ECHR, Attorney General Richard Hermer has suggested that any such move would amount to a “political trick”. Wanting to leave it altogether is a positively fringe position among MPs, and this summer’s welfare bill debacle demonstrates how hard it can be to get legislation past intransigent members of the PLP. Be that as it may, drastic legal changes may be the only way to actually remove failed asylum seekers in considerable numbers, as the steady stream of disrupted deportations implies. 

For all her strong rhetoric, then, Mahmood still needs to convince a party which, since the time of Tony Blair, has wedded itself to the cult of human rights, not to mention a Prime Minister who has become an emblem of this legalistic mindset. And the Prime Minister is likely to remain in situ. Andy Burnham Autumn has now run its course after barely a week, with the Greater Manchester Mayor telling a fringe event in Liverpool on Monday that he would not be challenging Starmer for the leadership. With the internal threat defused, the Prime Minister can focus his efforts on the Faragist menace, while Mahmood can worry less about trying to win over the Left of the party.

Despite the best efforts of Rachel Reeves, Labour is still trusted more than Reform when it comes to managing the economy. Its immigration policy, however, is a tougher sell, not least if the Chancellor pushes through a migration deal for young EU workers to boost public finances. And though Mahmood used her speech to praise the “one in, one out” deal negotiated with France by her predecessor Yvette Cooper, doubts remain about whether this ratio will hold firm in practice — and whether, more fundamentally, Starmer and his parliamentary colleagues have any desire to undertake the legal reforms that would enable Mahmood to do her job effectively. 

“The story of who we are is contested,” Mahmood claimed in Liverpool yesterday. She was talking about Britain, and about the new class of ethnonationalists who have seized the previously unifying language of patriotism and twisted it into something darker. Yet she could just as easily have been describing her own party. As Labour’s conference moves towards its conclusion, Starmer’s assertions that he has planted his flag and made clear what he stands for are hardly convincing. Mahmood has put forward a more persuasive assertion of her personal beliefs. But she won’t win over any Reform voters by accusing their leader of racism, while Left-wingers, many of whom are presently beguiled by Jeremy Corbyn or the Greens, may be put off by her self-presentation as “a patriot, proudly so”. This Gordian Knot applies to pretty much everything Starmer does on domestic policy, and his home secretary should prepare to have her hands tied just as often. 

This hints at an even broader problem for Labour. Whatever the glamour of the conference, the fact remains that neither Starmer nor his Cabinet is currently guiding British public opinion. The Overton window is moving markedly to the Right, evidenced by the very real prospect of a governing party at the end of this decade with a plan for mass deportations. Given all this, even relative radicals like Mahmood risk being stranded as the liberal consensus folds and a political revolution rages around them. But at least she’s trying. Jonathan Rutherford, a political adviser who is another influential Blue Labour figure, has — somewhat grandiosely — hailed Mahmood as “perhaps the most astute and able politician of her generation”. She isn’t, but she may still be Labour’s best hope of stopping the more likely holder of that title from capturing Number 10 in 2029. If, that is, her party can hold its nose.

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