Nigel Farage worse than a racist, says UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood
Describing recent racist abuse against her family, Shabana Mahmood says Reform immigration policy not technically racist
Shabana Mahmood has said that Nigel Farage is “worse than a racist” as she revealed that members of her own family had been called “f..king P … s” in the past few weeks.
The Home Secretary said she did not agree with Sir Keir Starmer’s characterisation of Mr Farage’s immigration policy as racist because “technically” it was not. However, she claimed that his radical pledge to abolish the right for migrants to permanently settle in the UK – which would apply to non-Europeans already living with settled status in the UK – was even more divisive because it was a deliberate “dogwhistle” attempt to appeal to racist voters.
Sir Keir’s unplanned intervention to brand Mr Farage’s policy racist in a BBC interview on Sunday was welcomed by Labour MPs and ministers who for months have been urging the party’s leadership to take a stronger stance on condemning Reform’s policies.
However, some ministers fear it will alienate voters Labour risks losing to Reform UK at the next election.
Mr Farage hit back and showed how he intended to exploit Sir Keir’s words for his own political advantage. Writing on X, the Reform leader said: “The Prime Minister has insulted those who believe mass migration should come to an end. Labour do not believe in border controls – and they think anyone who does is racist.”
On Monday (local time), Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy doubled down on Sir Keir’s description of Mr Farage’s comments as racist.
Speaking at a Spectator fringe event at the Labour Party conference, Ms Mahmood took a more nuanced stance on the matter as she also opened up about her own experience of racism.
Asked whether she agreed with the Prime Minister about Mr Farage’s policy, the Home Secretary said: “It’s a little bit worse than racist. If it was racist, in a funny way it would be easier to deal with. I think it’s immoral and extreme.
“Nigel Farage is playing the trick that, I think, he tries to play very regularly, which is he will say something that, technically he can say it’s not racist, but what he really knows he’s done is blown a very, very loud dog whistle to every racist in the country. I think that means he can always sort of claim plausible deniability.
“He’ll say, ‘well, that would apply to white people as well as non-white people’. Technically, that would be true, but he also knows he sent a clear signal to every racist in the land that those who have made their homes in this country might one day have their status ripped up.
“I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and it’s a much more cynical, much more dangerous form of politics. It’s much, much worse than racism.”
Ms Mahmood said that anti-Muslim hatred in the UK was now “on a scale that I’ve never known in my lifetime”.
She told Lord Michael Gove, the former cabinet minister who was chairing the event: “When I was a child, I think I was seven or eight years old, that’s the first time I heard the word ‘P …’ … so it’s not as if I haven’t been racially abused before.” She then told a moving story of how her family were racially abused in Sutton Park in Birmingham and did not return for 30 years.
“But what is happening now is something much deeper and much more pervasive, and it does feel like it’s everywhere at the moment,” Ms Mahmood said.
“Members of my own family, just in the last couple of weeks, you know, a handful of them have been called ‘f..king P … s’ in Birmingham, in places that I go to regularly with my family.”
Earlier, in her speech to the Labour Party conference, she said that some people who joined Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London this month were the “heirs to the skinheads and the P …-bashers of old”.
She said that the challenge faced by Labour was to regain control of legal and illegal immigration or face losing Britain’s fundamental values of an “open, tolerant and generous country”.
In his speech to Labour conference, Mr Lammy said of Mr Farage’s policy: “We must call his scheme to round up and deport our French, our Indian, our Caribbean neighbours who have indefinite leave to remain what it is. It is racist.”
Ms Reeves told LBC: “I think it’s wrong, and I think we should call it out (for) what it is. I think it is a racist policy.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan told a fringe event hosted by The Times that Reform’s plan is “the most un-British thing I can imagine”.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Prime Minister, has revealed that his wife would be affected by Mr Farage’s plans. Mr Jones told Times Radio his wife, Lucy Symons-Jones, who is from Australia and has indefinite leave to remain, is among the migrants Mr Farage’s policy would target.
The Times
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