As home secretary, Shabana Mahmood is the cabinet minister ultimately responsible for the UK’s policing and its national security – as well, of course, as managing the country’s borders and enforcing its immigration rules.
I include this reminder because Mahmood increasingly seems to be operating under the assumption that her job only concerns the latter of these.
In recent weeks, the UK media has relentlessly covered what looks like widespread and blatant lawbreaking by visible perpetrators.
“Danny Tommo” – an alias used by convicted criminal and former Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon bodyguard Daniel Thomas – and his “Patriot Platform” have filmed themselves engaging in direct action against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and against rescue efforts in the Channel as part of their guerrilla war against attempted crossings.
This began with a large-scale operation that blocked roads in Portsmouth – the kind of tactics that were deemed to be illegal and swiftly clamped down on when used by Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups.
In the wake of that action, RNLI volunteers and buildings were bombarded with threats, causing at least one site to close until the situation calmed down, meaning that the action has led to the direct loss of a vital, lifesaving service.
Thomas and his crew, though, continued to operate freely, staging an intimidation campaign outside the office of a national newspaper, and most recently chasing boats carrying would-be asylum seekers in the Channel. Footage filmed by Thomas and posted to social media shows him stabbing and slashing at a dinghy occupied by a rescue worker.
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On Wednesday night, two days after the event, he was finally arrested on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life. Footage – again filmed by Thomas – shows him telling officers, “I understand. I knew this was coming.” He must have been wondering what took the authorities so long.
The last few weeks have seen an escalating pattern of lawlessness, one which increasingly makes the government look like it has lost control of British streets. Though Thomas might now be in custody, it appears that he and Patriot Platform have been able to succeed in their aims, at least as far as shutting down an RNLI station.
The lesson these gangs are learning is that direct action gets results – exactly the opposite of what any responsible government would wish to teach.
Perhaps it is all part of some clever policing operation that is playing the long game. It would certainly be wrong for a politician to intervene in that if so. But Mahmood looks like a minister with tunnel vision, who has forgotten the breadth of her portfolio entirely in her monomania on immigration – not least because as she visibly loses control of the UK’s streets, she has been saying nothing about it.
On Wednesday, Mahmood found the time to issue a statement saying how unacceptable it was that two small boats had landed on UK shores without being intercepted first by authorities – having not found the time to comment nearly so visibly on any of the above lawlessness.
By doing so, she once again appeared to place herself on the side of the thugs on our streets – the ones making operations in the Channel so much harder for rescuers and UK authorities alike – instead of the people they are harassing.
Throughout Keir Starmer’s premiership, those on the left and centre increasingly despaired at his government’s limp and half-hearted response to the rise of an openly racist, militant far right movement in Britain.
The early days of Andy Burnham’s government have made Starmer’s look positively energetic: a prime minister who usually loves nothing more than being on camera has studiously avoided saying a word as he loses control of law and order in Britain, and his home secretary seems determined to appease the thugs, rather than promise to take them on.
This is a deep moral failure by a Labour government, but it’s politically stupid, too. Mahmood and the government want to point to their successes: the number of people arriving by small boats is down, they note, correctly. But constantly talking about the favourite issue of the far right has, shockingly, not made that issue go away.
Similarly, going all-out to end the use of asylum hotels hasn’t been a magic fix, either. Instead, there are a larger number of HMOs – houses in multiple occupation – taking their place, on residential streets, to a fresh backlash. Efforts to use military bases near otherwise small villages are blowing up, too.
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Faced with political failure after political failure, Mahmood seems determined to double down on her losing tactics, as if one more push will suddenly reverse the trend. The Home Office tends to make true believers out of home secretaries – signing them up to the agenda of a department that has been dysfunctional for decades. It has claimed another victim in Mahmood.
Labour voters are terrified of the far right, and furious that they are not being stopped. The broader British public still loathes the idea of masked men in the street and vigilante justice. The politics of this issue are not complicated for this government.
Mahmood’s job doesn’t begin and end with small boats: she is responsible for making all of the British public feel safe. If she wants to only worry about boats, she could consider asking Andy Burnham for a demotion, so he can have a Home Secretary willing to actually do the job.
Until then, a Labour government that lets the far right operate using violent tactics with impunity is unworthy of the name. The Burnham bounce will not survive for long – and nor will it deserve to – if it does not change course.
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