Shabana Mahmood made an impressive start as Home Secretary. Within her first 100 days, she had set out a tough new plan to ‘stop the boats’, drawing lessons from the experience of Denmark. Yet as we now move from winter to spring, it seems that much of the Labour party is becoming increasingly squeamish about Mahmood’s proposals to double the time it takes for migrants to qualify for permanent residence from five to ten years. The latest to sound the alarm is Angela Rayner, the Labour queen over the water. In a speech last night to the Mainstream group, she declared that it would be ‘un-British’ to change the rules for migrants already in the UK.
‘Enforcing a fair deal is not the same as ripping up a deal halfway through,’ Rayner said. ‘The people already in the system who made a huge investment now fear for their future…we cannot talk about earning a settlement if we keep moving the goalposts, because moving the goalpost undermines our sense of fair play,’ she added.
The ex Deputy-PM is not acting in a vacuum here: more than 100 MPs have already signed a letter, organised by Tony Vaughan, the MP for Folkestone and Hythe, claiming Mahmood’s plans undermined a commitment to integration and social cohesion. Various charities and religious leaders are demanding Mahmood ‘slow down and rethink’ too. Given the strength of feeling, a vote of some kind on her plans seems likely to be held, even if settlement changes are normally done via secondary legislation.
The ex Deputy-PM is not acting in a vacuum here. More than 100 Labour MPs share her concerns
The Home Secretary’s defenders note polling by More in Common. They argue that her reforms are popular with all groups of voters – even the Greens, whose victory in Gorton is viewed by some Labourites as a reason to U-turn on an asylum crackdown. Mahmood’s allies are at pains to point her reforms as an inherently Labour approach. As one MP told the Times: ‘There is absolutely no intention to not let people stay. It’s about delaying access to welfare and benefits after unprecedented levels of migration – the public expect their government to run the country in a way that does not put more strain on our services.’ With the Iran crisis ongoing and the weather getting warmer, small boats numbers will likely soon start ticking up. Can Labour afford another summer like last year, when arrivals rose to 41,000?
The fact that Rayner is now openly attacking Mahmood – albeit not by name – suggests that she thinks these proposals will not survive contact with reality. With a weak Prime Minister in No. 10, some of her allies believe a U-turn is now on the cards, to add to the growing tally we have already. The fact that Rayner is also giving wide-ranging speeches, to groups favourable to Andy Burnham, that happen to chime precisely with her colleagues’ concerns, will cause jitters among loyalists too. With the investigation by HMRC into her tax affairs still ongoing, any imminent overt move against Keir Starmer would be premature. But Rayner’s speech shows she thinks she can shape the direction of her party, even from afar.
With six weeks until the local elections, expect Kemi Badenoch and others to seize on these remarks as a sign of the deep splits that run right to the core of the Labour party. For those who thought that Iran might offer Keir Starmer some breathing space, Angela Rayner has shone a light on the tensions which still very much exist throughout the parliamentary Labour party.
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