A Principled Labour Politician

For this post, you have two options. You may prefer to read the article below, or alternatively you can watch the video above where I elaborate on the text.

Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is a politician who needs to be taken very seriously. Her proposals to end illegal migration are the first effort by the government to move beyond rhetoric and make real proposals.

Previously, Sir Keir Starmer has muttered about “smashing the gangs”, but he must have known that criminality does not get stopped by slogans. The war on drugs has been pursued with similar soundbites for decades and has not succeeded. It was an election statement that could be used to show that tackling illegal migration was not exclusively the preserve of the right, but never meant anything real. Indeed, had the 2024 election not been a foregone conclusion, the claim would have unravelled during the campaign.

The policies followed by Yvette Cooper as Home Secretary were no more serious. The previous government had found persuading the French to help had almost no real effect, other than wasting large amounts of taxpayers’ money by sending it across the Channel. Yvette Cooper gave them even more, which somehow had the effect of reducing the already limited number of migrants that the French authorities manage to stop.