If I came up with an idea and Tommy Robinson endorsed it, I would want to swallow myself whole. I’d need to break my own jaw as I’m a 6ft-tall, 20-stone man, but I’d still prefer the pain and struggle of trying to digest my own saturated fat, hopefully avoiding getting my own man-gristle stuck between my teeth, before I happily received praise from Britain’s most notorious gobshite.

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Being Home Secretary is a poisoned chalice. They’re responsible for policing, MI5, counter-terrorism, and the hot potato that is immigration. It is the latter by which Home Secretaries are judged and stake their reputation.

Theresa May was the mother of the ‘Hostile Environment,’ Priti Patel considered constructing her own version of Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon, in the hope it would push asylum seekers back to France. As for Suella Braverman, she would have a good night’s sleep, dreaming of ‘swarms’ of immigrants being sent to Rwanda, whilst denying luxuries to the indigenous homeless such as tents.

In my time following politics, I can’t think of a Home Secretary who was a beacon of compassion first and foremost, but Amber Rudd was unquestionably the most decent and liberal. She fell on her sword for inadvertedly misleading Parliament, in the good old days when politicians held higher standards. The idea of Ms Rudd shouting “Stop the Boats” would be unthinkable, but the idea of politicans to the left of the One Nation Conservatives using catastrophising and dehumanising rhetoric when discussing immigration was also implausible.

Yvette Cooper wasn’t one for using that kind of language, but like the populists that preceded her, she loved a three-word slogan that promised something undeliverable: “Smash the Gangs!” She ticked her next populist box when she bragged about having British, English and Yorkshire flag bunting all over her house. That felt inauthentic, but nowhere near as disassociative as a former human rights laywer warning that Britain risks becoming “An Island of Strangers.”

If Labour wanted to get a grip on the immigration crisis once and for all, they had to get creative. What if they had a second-generation immigrant to front their cognitive dissonance? What if they found a woman of ethnic minority willing to pull the ladder up from underneath people who looked like her own parents? A tried and tested formula, but here’s the twist: This time, it’s a Labour Home Secretary doing it.

Enter Shabana Mahmood, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, representing a diverse Birmingham constituency.

If a Reform politician said they wanted to quadruple the eligibility period for refugees to apply for indefinite leave to remain, people like me on the centre-left would rightfully criticise the inhumanity of leaving refugees in limbo for twenty years. If a Labour politician said the same thing, my reaction would be exactly the same.

If a Reform politician wanted to halve the review period of someone’s refugee status, change it from permanent to temporary, and then potentially return people to their home countries that were once war zones but “no longer,” we’d question its viability. Syria is in a better place under President Al-Sharaa, but tensions between the Druze, Alawites, Bedouins, Muslims and Christians still exist, with violent clashes between these groups and massacres of ethnic minorities still taking place.

The international community is more open to Syria, but some sanctions still apply. Would I accept it if a Labour Government wanted to return Syrian refugees to a country with fractured infrastructure and a backdrop of bloodshed? Absolutely not.

If a Reform politician proposed returning Ukrainians once the Russian invasion had been “settled,” they may be comfortable returning people to ever-closer proximity to Putin. But I wouldn’t. And nor should a Labour Government.

If a right-wing politician said that victims of modern slavery should be deported because they didn’t disclose their predicament early enough, we would consider how callous that judgement call would be. Trafficked foreigners may be terrified of confiding in the authorities, believing the police and their captors are in cahoots, which, in some authoritarian states, they are.

Human Rights Are Universal

The Conservatives and Reform both support leaving the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). The Tories have even contemplated simply “disapplying” elements of it, in the same spirit as breaking international law in a ‘specific and limited way.’

To see a Labour Home Secretary stand in the House of Commons and seriously consider narrowing the application of Article 3: ‘The absolute right to freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment’ makes me feel sick.

There have been cases where convicted foreign criminals have successfully appealed against deportation because their healthcare needs cannot be met in their home country. These are genuinely difficult situations, but our European values should set us apart from states that willingly disregard human rights for their own ends. If it means a convicted criminal must be detained here indefinitely to protect their human rights, then that is simply something the UK Government would have to accept.

In May, nine EU countries signed an open letter seeking reform of the treaty itself, aiming to rebalance states’ rights and obligations in their favour, and protect members from deliberate campaigns to overwhelm borders with irregular migrants at the behest of Russia and Belarus.

As a liberal who believes in human rights and the strength of institutions, that is how issues should be resolved. Individual states must not cherry-pick when they apply human rights. Even for foreign criminals. Individual states must also be prevented from unilaterally interpreting Article 8.

The Right To A Family & Private Life

When drafting this piece, I felt the Government’s reforms were fair and proportionate. But something dawned on me overnight.

If a refugee comes here, settles here, builds a career here, forms a community and integrates into British society, that could be instantly taken away if their country of origin is suddenly deemed “safe.” Someone skilled or well-educated might face ten years of uncertainty instead of twenty, but I can’t see any moral incentive to uproot someone’s life like that.

Ask the sort of person who attends a Tommy Robinson rally what they think of immigration and they’ll say: “Deport them all!” Ask them about an immigrant they actually know, and they’ll say: “Well I don’t mean them!” The far right demand assimilation while failing to see the assimilation happening right under their nose, because they fixate on small boats, a so-called invasion that has negligible impact on their lives.

I don’t think most British people genuinely want to deprive settled refugees of a good life. If the Government want to change the scope of Article 8, it cannot be done unilaterally.

Gold

Whilst Policy papers set out clear objectives without hyperbole, the media narrative around immigration has never been more hostile. Reform and the Conservatives usually fan those flames. Not Labour.

Seeing the Home Secretary paint a picture where refugees are flicking through a travel brochure deciding between a fortnight in Calais or a week in Camber Sands is an affront to the concept of sanctuary. For refugees, the “golden ticket” is not being tortured or slaughtered, regardless of where they end up.

In their attempt to emulate Denmark’s regimented hostility to refugees, this Government contradicts itself. On one hand, they claim Britain is a great nation entering a “Decade of National Renewal.” On the other, they pitch Britain as Hostile Environment 2.0, where immigration officers seize your jewellery, leave you to fend for yourself on the streets and incarcerate your children.

This carbon-copy of the Danish Social Democrats’ approach does not travel well across the centre-left. So much so that the Social Democrats are now predicted to lose control of Copenhagen A city they’ve adminstered locally for more than a century.

Scandinavia

As a Nordic noir buff and lover of all things Scandi, I’d love to live in Denmark. The taxes are extortionate, but the public services, everything from transport to childcare, are second to none. Salaries are high and its citizens rate Denmark as the second happiest country in the world. English language proficiency is very high, but you do have to learn the local lingo to gain residency, which is perfectly legitimate.

Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible. I speak a bit of Swedish thanks to the pandemic, Babbel, and having time for obscure hobbies when we were all going stir crazy. Written down, the three languages look almost identical. Spoken is a different matter. Norwegians sound clear and jolly. Swedes sound stern and precise. Danes sound like they’ve had a skinful of Tuborg and a pastry lodged in their throat.

I say this in jest, but it emphasises how inescapable English is as a pull factor. It’s the world’s lingua franca. Britain cannot discard its imperial past. It’s partly why some Brits feel they have a God-given right to emigrate to Australia and New Zealand, forgetting our initial relationship with the locals wasn’t exactly tea and biscuits.

As a nation, we cannot claim superiority only when it suits. Brexit made clear that our influence is diminished. Brexiteers pissed away decades of goodwill with Europe, ignoring the fact that existential issues like immigration must be resolved at the supranational level. Instead of retaining participation in the Dublin Agreement, the Government is now exploring sending migrants to safe third countries. It’s Rwanda with a rebrand, in the same way the Tories tried to rebrand foodbanks as “food pantries.”

By sending refugees to “return hubs,” Britain is essentially asking countries it deems lesser to absorb our burden without saying so.

I’m not advocating open borders. All I want is a return to the pre-Brexit status quo: European cooperation restored, Britain viewed once again as tolerant and welcoming, and Nigel Farage consigned to the fringes of political ideas, not the pioneer of them.

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