The most apposite comment on Shabana Mahmood’s proposed reforms to the asylum system came from Kemi Badenoch during yesterday’s Commons statement on the plans: ‘The Home Secretary has done more in 70 days than her predecessor managed in a year.’
On one level that was damning with faint praise, given that Yvette Cooper’s tenure in the Home Office produced nothing of any consequence. But the Conservative leader clearly – and correctly – did not mean it as an insult to Mahmood.
Whatever one’s view of the reforms themselves, one thing has been obvious since the day Mahmood became home secretary: she is a serious politician with her own ideas and her own style. Tony Benn famously divided politicians into Signposts and Weathercocks. As Benn explained: ‘The Signpost says, “This is the way we should go.” And you don’t have to follow them but if you come back in ten years time the Signpost is still there. The Weathercock hasn’t got an opinion until they’ve looked at the polls, talked to the focus groups, discussed it with the spin doctors.’ In a government of Weathercocks, Mahmood is one of the few Signposts.
One anecdote from this week is revealing of both her confidence in what she is doing and a broader self-confidence as a politician. Every Sunday a minister is nominated for the broadcast round. A combination of having nothing to say beyond selling or defending whatever policy is under discussion that week, and a pulverising fear of making a ‘mistake’, means that ministers and their teams – the same applies to shadow ministers – usually ask to keep interviews to the shortest time the programmes will agree to.
On Sunday it was the Home Secretary touring the TV studios to sell her plans. I am told that Mahmood asked at least one programme if she could have a minimum of 20 minutes rather than the much shorter time that is the show’s standard – and told the presenter that they could ‘have even longer if you want, I want the time to explain what I want to do.’ It was the first instance in the presenter’s entire time on their Sunday morning show that any minister has ever asked for more time. After the interview, Mahmood said to the presenter that she would like to do a Weekend World-style 45 minutes next time.
It isn’t just about being confident enough to actively welcome longer and deeper questioning. Listening to Mahmood on Sunday was a revelation. We have grown so used to the robotic speech patterns of front bench politicians who rely on soundbites and a syntax that bears no relation to normal human speech that when one of them speaks as a normal human, and with passion, about her ideas, her aims and her views, as Mahmood does, it is a jolting experience.
She is not alone in this. Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and, to an extent, Zack Polanski all have the ability to speak normally. That was also core to Tony Blair’s success.
It used to be said by Ed Miliband’s supporters, somewhat bizarrely, that he ‘speaks human’ – when in reality he has always exemplified the gobbledegook approach to politician-speak. But he is nonetheless one of Tony Benn’s Signposts. He is not only evangelical about his green agenda, he has stuck at it since first being environment secretary under Gordon Brown between 2008 and 2010, no matter how strong the attacks. And he will doubtless still be at it long after this government has departed.
Most of us are only really now getting to know Shabana Mahmood. Prior to Labour’s win last year, there was only really one thing about her that even people with an above average interest in politics knew – that in 2014 she took part in a demonstration outside a branch of Sainsbury’s in Birmingham, closing it by lying down in the street to protest against it selling goods made in Israeli settlements. Now we are learning more, and with a leadership contest looking more like when rather than if, it will fascinating to see where she stands across a range of issues. She might well, if her confidence in her own abilities and views persuades her party, be our next PM.
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