Home secretary says asylum overhaul is rooted in ‘Labour values’ – what are those values?
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, says that her plans to overhaul the asylum system are rooted in “Labour values”. The proposals include removing government support for some asylum seekers and limiting initial refugee status from five years to 30 months.
In a Guardian op-ed, Mahmood wrote that these values, uniting working-class communities, social reformers and immigrants are:
First, a belief in fairness: recognising that the dice are loaded against working-class communities. Second, tolerance towards others, that very British desire to live and let live. Third, a quiet but determined patriotism, for a country that is forever changing while something ineffable always endures.
But immigration has long been a topic where Labour’s values clash with one another.
The protectionist roots of the trade union movement saw foreign labour as a threat to undercutting wages and job displacement. Historically, unions adopted a highly restrictive position on immigration. At the same time, the inclusive principles of equality and representation of the working class (of which many racial minorities were part) complicated this picture.
This tension was evident in the postwar period. Labour in office presented a mix of policies including anti-discrimination race relations reforms, along with restrictive immigration legislation such as the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which sought to to block entry for Kenyan Asians despite their formal status as UK citizens.
Labour’s dilemma has long been how to defend the working class within a capitalist system. The solution to this intractable problem has always been to dampen class conflict by promoting national unity.
This has meant that patriotism and social reform have gone hand in hand, creating divisions between “deserving” and “non-deserving”. The question of who deserves welfare and support has long been part of border control. The very first immigration act, the 1905 Aliens Act, authorised the deportation of those in receipt of poor relief. Today, the condition of “no recourse to public funds” is placed on most visas.
The government’s newest proposals place a strong emphasis on deservingness through the language of “earning” a right to stay in the UK. They place new conditions on settlement, and require refugees to prove their need for sanctuary again and again.
New Labour
The equation changed dramatically under New Labour. Tony Blair’s government leant into Thatcherite neoliberalism, valuing labour market flexibility as a counter-inflationary measure. Coupled with belief in the benefits of globalisation, the Labour government enacted one of the most expansive economic immigration programmes, historically and comparatively across Europe.
The policy fit with the package of multicultural nationalism New Labour was selling. But this was an economic calculation, not a values-based one. The divisions of deserving and undeserving continued, with a discourse of “bogus” asylum seekers and a regressive policy to match: expanding immigration detention, replacing monetary support with vouchers and reducing appeal rights.
With Ukip beating the anti-migrant drum, the saliency of migration spiked. Many believed the government ultimately lost office partly on the basis of their immigration record.
Enter Blue Labour, a faction that claimed Labour was, at the heart, culturally conservative on many areas including immigration. Ed Miliband, then leader, pivoted towards a fairly logical policy for Labour within this paradigm. This policy framed exploitation as the driver of migrant labour demands, and proposed making it illegal for employers to undercut wages by exploiting workers. However, this approach didn’t cut through to voters, and was troubled by gaffes such as the “controls on immigration” mugs.
Fearing the electoral threat of Ukip, the Conservatives campaigned in 2010 on a pledge to reduce net migration. This pledge became the net migration policy, and a bipartisan consensus was formed to reduce immigration.
Jeremy Corbyn’s policy was, like Miliband’s, truer to Labour values. But it was not necessarily the inclusive picture in practice. Appealing to socialist state management and harking back to postwar consensus, Corbyn advanced the call to move Britain away from a liberal labour market, with less dependence on low-paid migrant labour.
Read more: Why Jeremy Corbyn can’t seem to solve Labour’s immigration conundrum
Corbyn espoused a rhetoric of multicultural and inclusive politics. But his Euroscepticism was always fuelled by a rejection of neoliberal markets – of which EU mobility, he saw, was contributing. As he explained in 2017, Corbyn was against the “wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions in the construction industry”. Brexit politics dogged Labour and cut across this tension, and the party has struggled to form a coherent policy ever since.
In opposition, Labour’s policy looked potentially promising. Ahead of the 2024 election, Keir Starmer touted plans to look at immigration holistically with labour market policy. Yet since entering office, Labour’s policy and rhetoric has lurched further to the right.
The values of postwar Labour’s protectionism would see the door closed to many, but would enhance rights of those that can come legally and address the structural problems of the UK labour market. Blair’s neoliberal managed migration was designed to take advantage of global wage disparities, but channelled a more positive message on migration.
The new proposals do neither. Mahmood says they are rooted in fairness – but for whom? A policy that pulls the rug from beneath long-term residents and refugees trying to build a life in the UK legally and legitimately is not fair to them. When the home secretary talks of fairness, she appears to only be referring to what the party believes citizens regard as fair, claiming that without stricter migration control, they lose trust in government.
The fallacy of that position is that immigration controls can and do bleed into citizenship regimes. The recent border controls imposed on dual citizens demonstrate this starkly, as does the crackdown on illegal immigration in the US, which has seen citizens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Perhaps Britons think more regressive policies on migrants are fair, but opinions may change if citizens are affected.
Erica Consterdine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.