Morgan McSweeney is pinning all his hopes on Shabana Mahmood
Shabana Mahmood chooses her moments carefully around the cabinet table. She rarely intervenes, and when she does, she is sparing with her words. But once she begins, “you can feel the whole room stop and pay attention”, one cabinet colleague from a different Labour tradition says.
After last week’s messy display of division and suspicion at the top of the Labour Party, it might be a surprise to hear there is such sincere respect for the Home Secretary. She is widely seen as a capable, impressive politician. That doesn’t mean, however, that the immigration reforms she unveiled on 17 November are going down well.
When the cabinet met on 18 November, Mahmood had the floor. She restated her case for the biggest changes to the asylum system since the Second World War – which includes reviewing refugees’ status every two and a half years, quadrupling the length of time before they can apply for permanent residence, ending the process of multiple appeals. There were “no dissenting voices”, one attendee says. But Mahmood may also have known that some Labour politicians privately uncomfortable with the plans were present too – some, perhaps, are future rivals for the leadership. They have held fire for now. But one insider acknowledges that if the plans unravel, cabinet colleagues could turn on them, better positioning themselves for any future contest.
There is palpable anxiety about the proposals. Some MPs, including a few who are far from the “usual suspects”, have put their concerns on the record. Many more feel that way privately. One cabinet minister says they are uneasy about forcing refugees into effectively a 20-year-long limbo, during which they might make a life in the UK, but could be returned to their home country at any moment if the government deems it safe. For others, it is the message underpinning the policies that makes them uneasy: “refugees are not welcome”.
No 10 knows these proposals are coming at a particularly febrile moment, but it has pushed on for a simple reason that may appear counter-intuitive: Downing Street does not want to fight the next election on immigration. A senior No 10 figure says the only way to do that is by sorting the issue out now. The government has reached the conclusion that Keir Starmer’s initial plan to “smash the gangs” is insufficient on its own. Doomed, too, they have concluded, is any attempt to change how the government responds to boats as they cross. “You can’t tackle it in the Channel,” a senior official says. They insist that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would not help. Domestic law would still – rightly, the official argues – impose the moral and legal duty to save lives and bring those who have entered British waters safely to shore.
It is no secret Mahmood was Morgan McSweeney’s pick for Home Secretary, and that the main aim of September’s reshuffle was to get in someone prepared to do “whatever it takes” to reduce small-boat crossings. Mahmood and No 10 have worked intensively on these asylum plans in the ten weeks since, and now believe they have the solution. Their hopes are pinned on reducing the salience of immigration as an issue by the next election. On 20 November, they will have moved again, making an announcement on curbing legal migration.
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None of this, of course, is entirely distinct from the leadership speculation that burst out into the open earlier this month. If there was ever any suggestion Wes Streeting was McSweeney’s preferred successor to Starmer, that ended when No 10 sources accused the Health Secretary of plotting a coup against the Prime Minister. Streeting then decried Downing Street’s “toxic culture”. Though allies of McSweeney deny he briefed against Streeting, and the latter’s sympathisers haven’t named who they believe to be responsible, two big figures of the Labour right are at odds.
One Labour insider describes this split as more than a clash of personalities: as the long-standing divide on the right of the party “playing out clear as day”, after lying dormant in recent years. If Streeting is from the tradition of the Progress think tank – Blairite, pro-business, socially liberal – then McSweeney, usually described as Blue Labour, is closer to the Labour First, old-right tradition that favours state power with social conservatism. When both sides had a common enemy – the Jeremy Corbyn left – they put aside their differences and worked together, and continued to do so during Starmer’s time in opposition. Governing, however, has forced them to confront their different instincts again. The Blairites are watching on with mounting alarm at the government’s failures. That division on the Labour right will be an important one to watch in any leadership contest.
There is much speculation that Mahmood is McSweeney’s pick to succeed Starmer. But if that were the case, he has given her an invidious introduction to the Labour membership. “A lot of my members hadn’t heard of her before,” a senior Labour MP notes. “Now all they know is that she’s saying things on immigration that they disagree with.”
McSweeney is reliant on Mahmood, but for a more pressing reason. Isolated and weakened by recent events, this immigration policy is nonetheless an internal victory for McSweeney and his kind of politics. A key ally is carrying out exactly the kind of policy he believes is necessary both to govern well and win the election. He – and by extension, Starmer – are gambling on her immigration policy turning their fortunes around. It needs to get past the Labour Party first. And then it needs to work.
[Further reading: Reform uses Mahmood to recruit more members]
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