Shabana Mahmood has had a good week. By the dismal standards of her senior cabinet colleagues, she has had a pretty phenomenal week; she is being written about in statesmanlike terms by hostile press outlets, and even implacable opponents are conceding that she at least is doing something.
Or at least, she appears to be doing something. And as far as a lot of Reform’s supporters are concerned, she is winding up all of the right people — which might not be all that counts, but counts for quite a lot. Labour’s backbenchers and the Greens and the bishops of the Church of England are rending their garments and clutching their pearls, shrieking that Mahmood is cruel and heartless. That’s what everybody wants to hear.
There is a rich Westminster tradition of Home Secretaries making fiercely tough announcements, safe in the knowledge that the system itself will prevent anything actually happening long before orders are put into effect. But in the meantime, screeching left-liberal anguish will have given the public sufficient impression that the Home Secretary is at least trying. Prior to Theresa May’s ascendancy, the Home Office had become thought of as the graveyard of senior ministerial careers, but in the right hands, it can act as a life support system for even the most hopeless of prime ministerial ambitions. In much the same way as page three of the Sun was sustained for years beyond its natural cultural life expectancy thanks to the disapproval of the Guardian, Priti Patel’s moribund career was kept lingering on by the outraged front pages (and cartoons) of progressive broadsheets.
Shabana Mahmood, though, is trying something slightly different here, and to her credit it is a little more sophisticated. Rather than relying on the left-wing press to get upset about tough announcements that will never come to fruition, Mahmood has in fact announced a relative relaxation of citizenship policy for most of those arriving illegally, compared with those arriving via regular channels. But she has hidden it in plain sight amongst tough, and even outright cruel-sounding announcements that may well technically come into force, but will not actually apply to any significant number of people. This has been sufficient to generate sufficient left-wing apoplexy for dozy right-wingers not to notice what she is actually doing.
As any fool can see, this regularises and formalises the existing settlement
A few commentators have noted the diabolical details, including the Norths, pѐre et fils. The government’s proposals split out asylum seekers into two categories — “core protection’” and “work and study”. Those who remain in core protection will face a far longer wait of 20 years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and will face rolling re-assessments every 30 months as to whether their home country and circumstances mean that they are still eligible for asylum. However, the government makes it clear that it will expect most refugees to opt into the work and study track, under which they will be eligible to apply for ILR after the same waiting period of 10 years as a regular migrant, and will be free to work and study as the name suggests. They will also be entitled to apply for family reunion visas.
As any fool can see, this regularises and formalises the existing settlement, under which arriving illegally in the UK and seeking asylum is the most straightforward way into Britain for those who lack the skills or credentials to find sponsorship or obtain a visa. Furthermore, such arrivals will still be able to obtain British nationality for themselves and their descendents for all and ever after, and will become just as British and you or me.
Additionally, she has announced provisions for “safe and legal routes” for refugees wishing to apply for asylum without landing in the country illegally, including a community sponsorship pathway, a route for skilled refugees, and a pathway for students who have become “displaced” during the course of their studies. But as ever, the rubber dinghy option is still available for all of those who do not pass muster via one or the other of these channels, and following that, the “work and study” track, and ILR after ten years.
I challenge readers to go and find any commentary in mainstream conservative media from the 48 hours after the announcement, detailing these issues and considering the potential consequences. The closest to the mark was possibly Charles Hymas in the Telegraph who noted the fact that the children of refugees living in Britain on the “core protection” track were themselves eligible for British citizenship at the age of 10 created a loophole which could prevent their parents’ deportation. But even this missed the point that most refugees were very unlikely to spend that long on the core protection track anyway.
At the time of writing on 20th November, some commentary has begun to trickle out to the effect that Mahmood will announce safeguards to prevent the work and study track being used as a backdoor into the asylum system. But little of this seems to point out that the work and study track is a notion of the Home Secretary’s own devising a mere three days earlier, and that the asylum system will now be a backdoor into working and studying in the UK.
The flaws in Mahmood’s plans will all come out soon enough, but a narrative has already been established that the Home Secretary is bold and decisive and willing to stand up to politically correct extremists in her own party. Many conservative-leaning commentators have spent the last few days gushing over Mahmood’s verbal demolition of the former Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer in parliament on Tuesday, rejoicing in the spectacle of a robust ethnic minority woman of humble origins putting a spoiled middle class brat in her place. Even the coverage that has been dismissive of her announcements has largely accepted the spin at face value.
Right-wing commentators are doing this of course because it’s good drama; it’s fun to watch the delicate left having meltdowns, and it is enjoyable to speculate about Shabana Mahmood being a plausible candidate to replace Keir Starmer. It makes for better copy, it’s less challenging for readers, I do get it. But good heavens, it’s all so dismally shallow.
Is there any other supposedly mature democracy where one of the most senior members of the cabinet would be allowed to get away with such an obvious bait and switch regarding the most controversial policy issue of the day? Where a ploy as patently ridiculous as the threat to confiscate the jewellery of illegal boat migrants could be relied upon to antagonise the left, and so in turn to distract the right?
This [is] all evidence of the shallowness of public debate and democratic scrutiny
David Mitchell and Robert Webb devised a comic sketch imagining MI5 planning the assasination of Princess Diana on the orders of Prince Philip, by organising for her driver to be drunk and then get chased around Paris by paparazzis. One officer points out that the entire plan is contingent on her not wearing a seatbelt, but the concern is dismissed by her superior noting that “women recently made pregnant by the only man they’ve ever loved are notoriously slapdash about their personal safety”. In much the same vein, the Home Secretary’s ruse was predicated on nobody among her opponents in either politics or the media actually reading her plans in full, or at least, not until an impenetrable narrative had been constructed. One can imagine a lowly spad suggesting that surely, somebody among the ranks of the conservative press or staffers to the shadow cabinet is going to sit down and read the actual text about a supposedly momentous announcement on their own core policy issue. “Oh, no need to worry about that,” replies the voice of experience.
Not only is this all evidence of the shallowness of public debate and democratic scrutiny in Britain, but it’s also downstream of the maddening tendency of British politicos to outsource their thinking to one another. Everybody in Westminster is so desperate to reassure everyone else that they know what is going on that they grab the easiest and most digestible story on offer, rather than trying to process the facts themselves. It results in a herdlike instinct to move as one on the question of the day, and by the time anybody has got a chance to actually go through the details, they’ve already regurgitated too much of the received wisdom to be able to backtrack without sounding foolish.
