After a fortnight in which Keir Starmer lost both Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson but also reshaped his cabinet and his Downing Street team, one of the Prime Minister’s senior aides remarked to a friend: ‘Would I swap the last two weeks? Probably not, because the cabinet we’ve got and the No. 10 we’ve got are exactly what we need to turn the country around. Shabana will do really great work in the Home Office.’
Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, may not be the best-known figure in the Labour firmament, but the Downing Street official is far from alone in pinning the party’s hopes for re-election on her. Another senior figure explains: ‘The entire plan was predicated on getting Shabana to tackle migration, to get Pat [McFadden] to have another go at reforming welfare and Steve [Reed] to build houses.’
While these three ministers are like Starmtroopers, sent to rescue an embattled Prime Minister, a growing number of Labour MPs are concluding that after 15 months of failure, the government might be better off in different hands. When the party gathers for its annual conference in Liverpool this weekend, some see it as Starmer’s last chance to present a convincing story to the electorate and give his grassroots supporters a reality check about the practicalities of power when there is no money to splash around.
With Rayner (the slam-dunk heir apparent only a month ago) out of the way and Andy Burnham on manoeuvres (outlining his ‘vision’ on the front of the New Statesman this week), Labour MPs are starting to think that if there is going to be a leadership contest, the most impressive figure to take on the soft-left might be Mahmood, rather than Wes Streeting, hitherto the darling of the Labour right. ‘One of them has balls and the other is a man,’ says one veteran Westminster wit.
Even some of Burnham’s friends in parliament think he would be well advised to build a broad team if he wants the top job. ‘If Andy is serious about putting factionalism aside and building the best team, that means talking to and perhaps recruiting Shabana,’ a minister says. Claims that Mahmood might run a Streeting leadership campaign are dismissed by her friends as ‘briefings to make her seem irrelevant’. They believe she has eclipsed the Health Secretary as Burnham’s most credible challenger.
The Mayor of Manchester said his plan would put ‘place before party’ and Starmer will this week try to grab that theme for himself when the Prime Minister presents plans for a Pride of Place programme to pump millions into 330 communities across the country. Reed, the Housing Secretary, will on Thursday unveil plans to hand new powers to seize boarded stores and block bookmakers, vape shops and fake barbers on the high street. There will also be a Community Right to Buy to save beloved assets, such as pubs and libraries, and convert disused department stores or abandoned office blocks into housing or health centres.
Reed said: ‘My political journey started on the streets of Lambeth, where I was first a councillor and then council leader, and I genuinely learned more on the streets of that borough than in any job since. In my time, I’ve seen people pour so much passion and energy into transforming their communities. But I’ve also shared their sheer frustration and weariness when they keep running into blocks and barriers. The Levelling Up programme under the previous government had the right instincts – it wanted to tackle regional inequality and economic neglect. But, honestly, it never had the follow-through. We’re turning Levelling Up on its head, giving communities the power.’
Reed is on the up, but it says something that he has just lost his special adviser, Jamie Williams, to Mahmood, whose right-hand man, Josh Williams (no relation), is already regarded as one of the better operators in Whitehall. The Home Office has always been regarded as a ‘glittering graveyard’ of political careers, but Theresa May showed that it is not impossible to use it as a launching pad to the top job. And Mahmood, who knows her own mind, has far better political antennae than May.
In her first week as Justice Secretary, she was warned that the police would be forced to stop arresting people unless thousands of prisoners were released to free up detention space. She executed this political pirouette with aplomb, directing the blame to her Tory predecessors and later trumping the negative publicity by letting it be known that she favoured the chemical castration of paedophiles – a suggestion which made the front page of the Sun. When the American right greeted the appointment of a Muslim Home Secretary with a chorus of incredulity, Harry Cole, the paper’s editor at large, tweeted: ‘For a lefty, she’s nails. Wants to castrate nonces, for starters.’
Labour MPs are starting to think that if there is a leadership contest, Mahmood could take on the soft-left
Indeed, her admirers say it is Mahmood’s Muslim heritage and second-generation immigrant background that make it easier for her to say things that many in her party find uncomfortable, including the Prime Minister. At a cabinet away day at Chequers, when Starmer hailed his team as the most working-class ever, Mahmood interjected to say: ‘Of course we all understand the people we grew up with. But do those people really recognise themselves and their values in this Labour party?’
She also believes that Labour can only focus their efforts where they matter if they trim spending which is unjust and counter-productive to their historic mission as the party of workers. (As opposed to the party of virtue-signallers and those whose economic inactivity is indulged.) ‘Labour – the clue is in the name,’ Mahmood told the Today programme, making the ‘moral case’ for policies that encourage people into the workplace. ‘She believes in the value and dignity of work,’ a friend explains.
Mahmood supports a more contributory benefits system – something proposed in a recent paper by Labour Together, the pressure group which Morgan McSweeney, Downing Street chief of staff, used to run. Advocates say that would remove some of the perceived unfairness of newly arrived migrants being treated the same as hardworking Brits.
‘She’s really the only minister, along with Liz Kendall [the former work and pensions secretary] sometimes, who says that the state should stop doing things,’ says a cabinet attendee. At a time when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, needs to plug a black hole of around £40 billion, this ought to be less of a novelty. It is also a policy area in which Mahmood’s heritage informs her positioning. Those close to her say she talks about how being born to immigrants new to this country, she has a ‘look after the pennies’ approach to the nation’s finances, learnt from working at the till of the family corner shop.
All of this means that Mahmood speaks the language of those who despair at Starmer’s lack of direction and his apparent belief that deliverism – rather than shock treatment – is what the country needs. Mahmood, with McSweeney’s backing, is trying to reform the way Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a family life, is interpreted by British judges in asylum cases.
The new deal with France, which has so far sent many more migrants to Britain than back to France, was a lesson for Mahmood about the frequently shambolic operations of the Home Office, a department which regularly continues to demonstrate the truth of John Reid’s judgment that it was ‘not fit for purpose’. The first attempt to send an Eritrean migrant to France was blocked by the courts on Tuesday last week. Mahmood, a former barrister, was ‘furious but not overly demonstrative’ and summoned senior officials and departmental lawyers to interrogate how the case was lost – then ordered a rewrite of the legal guidance on modern slavery, which was what had led to the holdup. By Thursday, the court had overturned its decision. By the end of the week, three migrants had been deported. ‘People looked at her differently after that,’ says one official. ‘They haven’t been used to speedy decision-making.’ This was a dig at Mahmood’s predecessor, Yvette Cooper. Mahmood is also far more open to digital ID cards.
‘Sovereign countries have secure borders. That statement is an article of faith for me’
One Labour strategist contrasts Mah-mood’s position on immigration with Rachel Reeves’s attempt to talk tough by initially slashing winter fuel benefits and dis-ability benefits. ‘Those decisions were mistaking strength for toughness. You are strong when you are against your own party in favour of the voters. You are tough when you are against your own party and against the voters. Toughness can be politically dangerous and lead you to weakness. Shabana is strong because she is on the side of British public opinion.’ The same source contrasted her handling of the asylum case with the announcement on building a second runway at Gatwick: ‘It’s beyond mad that it will take four years… But Shabana is not afraid to use power. That’s what we need.’
Mahmood’s approach to migration is, however, nuanced. Allies say she believes that Britain is a tolerant, generous and open country, but thinks that a political case can only be built for integration if there are (and are seen to be) meaningful controls on both legal and illegal migration. In an address to Home Office staff last week she said: ‘Sovereign countries have secure borders. That statement is an article of faith for me.’
She also believes that it is important for Labour to appear patriotic or voters will turn to the ‘ethno-nationalism’ peddled by Tommy Robinson. Mahmood found the recent march of his supporters disquieting. She told Home Office staff: ‘I love our flags. I am an Englishwoman. Tommy Robinson can’t take that off me.’
Some of Mahmood’s views are unpalatable to those to the left of her, yet she has been a quiet but determined advocate in private for Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state. As MP for Birmingham Ladywood, she is, like Burnham, a fierce advocate of rebuilding industrial capacity outside London.
Labour’s party conference will be dominated by the battle for the deputy leadership between Lucy Powell, a close ally of Burnham, and Starmer’s candidate Bridget Phillipson. ‘Welcome to the most expensive deputy leadership contest ever,’ says one loyalist cynic. ‘So far we’ve created a new country [Palestine] and are preparing to overturn the two-child benefit cap in the hope that wins it for Bridget, who will lose and is no good anyway.’
Whoever wins the deputy leadership, Mahmood is now the woman to watch. But her fans in the party also know that her determination, strategic thinking and can-do attitude won’t be enough to save the government or position her to succeed Starmer. Only closing asylum hotels and making an appreciable dent in the number of small boat arrivals will do that. ‘Getting a grip of small boats is the gateway to re-establishing trust with the electorate,’ says a senior figure in No. 10.
As one admirer observes: ‘The membership love a winner and they love a successful politician. She gets that the only thing she can do is succeed, and if she doesn’t there is no point even discussing anything else.’ But if Mahmood is a success she might also be the one to beat.
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