“We Will REPLACE LABOUR”: Zack Polanski Says Labour’s Time Over
Green Party responds to ‘extreme, inhumane’ immigration proposals
Bristol Central’s Green Party MP, Carla Denyer, has responded to changes to the UK’s asylum policy, that would see asylum seekers having to wait 20 years to apply to settle permanently, and be subjected to regular reviews every two-and-a-half years, meaning people could be returned to their home nation if it is deemed safe.
Denyer said “This is a new low from this government – plumbing the depths of performative cruelty, in hopes that the public won’t notice they have no answers to the real issues facing communities across this country.
“Confiscating the belongings of people fleeing war and violence, and trapping refugees in perpetual limbo, where even those who have been granted asylum would have the constant threat of deportation hanging over their heads, undermining integration and making it impossible to put down roots. These are extreme, inhumane proposals from a desperate and failing government.
“The only way to prevent people making dangerous crossings by small boats is to open safe and managed routes for people to claim asylum in the UK. There are hints Mahmood could introduce such schemes – a sensible government would focus on this workable policy rather than divisive gimmicks.”
Labour asylum plans ‘will tear children from their homes’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-asylum-plans-will-tear-children-their-homes
People thought to be migrants boarding a small boat in Gravelines, France, November 6, 2025HOME SECRETARY Shabana Mahmood is seeking “to use children as a weapon” in her asylum plans, a Labour peer who came to Britain as a child refugee has warned.
The government is preparing to intensify the removal of entire families after unveiling a fresh set of harsh measures on Monday evening.
A document laying out the rules claimed that asylum-seekers are using their children to “thwart removal.”
Now a consultation will look at stripping financial support from families with under-18s if they had been refused asylum.
The government says it will offer “financial support” to encourage families to leave voluntarily, but still escalate an “enforced return” if they refuse.
Lord Alf Dubs, who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and arrived in England on Kindertransport, accused Ms Mahmood of using “children as a weapon,” describing it as a “shabby thing.”
He said: “I’m lost for words frankly. My concern was if we remove people who have come here, what happens if they’ve had children in the meantime?
“What are we supposed to do with the children who are born here, who’ve been to school here, who are part of our community and society?”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-asylum-plans-will-tear-children-their-homes
UK Labour to Let Authorities Take Jewelry From Asylum-Seekers as Part of Sweeping New Immigration Crackdown
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Labour won’t redistribute wealth from billionaires,” said former party Leader Jeremy Corbyn. “But they will seize belongings from those fleeing war and persecution.”
A new asylum policy announced Monday by the UK Labour Party will allow authorities to confiscate the jewelry and other belongings of asylum-seekers in order to pay for their claims to be processed.
The policy, which some critics said was “reminiscent of the Nazi era,” was just one part of the Labour Party’s total overhaul of the nation’s asylum system, which it says must be made much more restrictive in order to fend off rising support for the far-right.
In a policy paper released Monday, the government announced that it would seek to make the status of many refugees temporary and gave the government new powers to deport refugees if it determines it to be safe. It also revoked policies requiring the government to provide housing and legal support to those fleeing persecution, while extending the amount of time they need to wait for permanent residency to 20 years, up from just five, for those who arrive illegally.
The UK government also said it will attempt to change the way judges interpret human rights law to more seamlessly carry out deportations, including stopping immigrants from using their rights to family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid deportation.
In an article for the Guardian published Sunday, UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the reforms “the most significant and comprehensive changes to our asylum system in a generation.” She said they were necessary because the increase in migration to the UK had stirred up “dark forces” in the country that are “seeking to turn that anger into hate.”
Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform UK Party, is leading national polls on the back of a viciously anti-immigrant campaign that has included calls to abolish the UK’s main pathway for immigrants to become permanent residents, known as “leave to remain.”
Meanwhile, in September, over 100,000 people gathered in London for an anti-immigrant rally led by Tommy Robinson, a notorious far-right figure who founded the anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL). The event saw at least 26 police officers injured by protesters.
Last summer, riots swept the UK after false claims—spread by Robinson, Farage, and other far-right figures—that the perpetrator of the fatal stabbing of two young girls and their caretaker had been a Muslim asylum-seeker. A hotel housing asylum-seekers was set on fire, mosques were vandalised and destroyed, and several immigrants and other racial minorities were brutally beaten.
Mahmood said that if changes are not made to the asylum system, “we risk losing popular consent for having an asylum system at all.”
But as critics were quick to point out, the far-right merely took Labour’s crackdown as a sign that it is winning the war for hearts and minds.
Robinson gloated to his followers that “the Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots!” while Farage chortled that Mahmood “sounds like a Reform supporter.”
Many members of the Labour coalition expressed outrage at their ostensibly Liberal Party’s bending to the far-right.
“The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform,” said Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East. “Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right.”
In a speech in Parliament, she chided the home secretary’s policy overhaul, calling it “dystopian.”
“It’s shameful that a Labour government is ripping up the rights and protections of people who have endured unimaginable trauma,” she said. “Is this how we’d want to be treated if we were fleeing for our lives? Of course not.”
The UK has signed treaties, including the ECHR, obligating it to process the claims of those who claim asylum because they face persecution in their home countries based on race, religion, nationality, group membership, or political opinion. According to data from the Home Office, over 111,000 people claimed asylum in the year from June 2024-25, more than double the number who did in 2019.
The spike came as the number of people displaced worldwide reached an all-time high of over 123.2 million at the end of 2024, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, with desperate people seeking safety from escalating conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and across the Middle East.
In her op-ed, Mahmood lamented that “the burden borne by taxpayers has been unfair.” However, as progressive commentator Owen Jones pointed out, the UK takes in far fewer asylum-seekers than its peers: “Last year, Germany took over twice as many asylum-seekers as the UK. France, Italy, and Spain took 1.5 times as many. Per capita, we take fewer than most EU countries. Poorer countries such as Greece take proportionately more than we do.”
The Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, already boasts that it has deported more than 50,000 people in the UK illegally since it came to power in 2024, but it has predictably done little to satiate the far-right, which has only continued to gain momentum in polls despite the crackdown.
Under the new rules, it is expected that the government will be able to fast-track many more deportations, particularly of families with children.
The jewelry rule, meanwhile, has become a potent symbol of how the Labour Party has shifted away from its promises of economic egalitarianism toward austerity and punishment of the most vulnerable.
“Labour won’t redistribute wealth from billionaires,” said former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is now an independent MP. “But they will seize belongings from those fleeing war and persecution.”
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Morning Star Editorial: Curbing refugee rights is no solution to Britain’s problems
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/curbing-refugee-rights-no-solution-britains-problems
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood speaking after Lucy Powell is announced as the new Deputy Leader of the Labour Party at an event in central London, October 25, 2025THE Labour Party delegation that visited Denmark recently came back with the sense that the Scandinavian country’s mix of an eroding social democratic welfare system combined with a “muscular” immigration policy was a perfect fit for contemporary Britain.
And, in the imagination of many Labour MPs — those equally afeard of their electorates and of the No 10 disciplinary culture — this will tackle their most pressing fear, that a combination of Labour (and Keir Starmer’s) unpopularity with the appeal of Nigel Farage’s latest vehicle will see them jobless.
The idea that appeasing those voters in the grip of the delusion that restricting the rights of refugees is the key to solving Britain’s immigration problems will claw back electoral credibility has induced a paralysis.
Even the dimmest knows that Labour’s problems are deeper than this but they think this surrender to a primitive nativism is a quick fix.
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This is dressed up in the usual self-flattering language that is standard when Labour politicians surrender before a reactionary idea.
Far from Britain having “a proud tradition of welcoming those fleeing danger,” our country has a long tradition of receiving them with reluctance and hostility. There is not a Jewish family that does not have tales of hostility to their families fleeing eastern Europe, and of Holocaust survivors refused settlement both here and in Palestine. Migrants fleeing the empire to fill jobs in Britain faced no less hostility and discrimination.
Where the lie is made explicit is in Mahmood’s framing of the issue, that our “generosity is drawing illegal migrants across the Channel.”
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See the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/curbing-refugee-rights-no-solution-britains-problems