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).
Zarah Sultana says Your Party must be ‘explicitly socialist’ and ‘embrace class war’
Zarah Sultana at the supporters’ event in County Durham. Photo: Neil Terry PhotographyZARAH SULTANA has said Your Party must be “explicitly socialist” as she argued the new left-wing party must “embrace class war.”
The independent MP, who co-launched Your Party with Jeremy Corbyn in July, made the comments at a supporters’ event in County Durham on Saturday.
She said: “You can’t beat far-right politicians and fascism by ignoring them, or, as the Labour Party are doing, copying them.
“You do it by uniting the working class around a positive vision, and by building a movement that is broad and rooted in solidarity.
“People don’t want or need cultural wars — they need hope they need material improvements in their lives.
“What I’m saying is, we need socialism. We need to be explicitly socialist.
“That is not tweaking here and there. It’s not just lowering a few bills and a wealth tax just sprinkled on top, but it is a fundamental transformation of our society: the working class controlling the wealth that they produce and the means of production in their hands.
“We need an anti-Nazi anti-fascist league for the 21st century.”
…
Keir Starmer’s Labour is a lost cause. But there’s still hope for the left
Original article by Paul Rogers republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
| Ben Montgomery/Stringer / Leon Neal/Staff / Kristian Buus/Contributor / Getty Images / Composition by James Battershill
In choosing big business over ordinary people, the PM has sacrificed the heart of the Labour Party. So what next?
Labour’s political position is increasingly the reverse of the ‘for the many, not the few’ policy pursued under former leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party has embraced corporate capture and the main features of neoliberalism, albeit with incredibly poor timing, as the neoliberal economic model drives runaway wealth that increases dissent across much of the world.
It is no coincidence that, at the same time, when it should be coasting along on a huge parliamentary majority won less than 18 months ago, Labour has been plunged into political disarray and seen its lead disappear in the polls.
By cosying up to big business and failing to offer anything to substantially improve the lives of ordinary people up and down the country, Keir Starmer’s New-New Labour has seen a collapse in its general support and, more significantly, its membership.
The Labour Party has lost 300,000 of the 550,000 members it had in the Corbyn era. While it has been able to recoup the financial support offered by these ordinary members from a few big donors, it has in the process lost the heart of the party.
Many issues demonstrate this, but a few stand out. The government’s repeated refusal (now rumoured to be U-turned on at next month’s Budget) to lift the two-child benefit cap. Its flagship welfare bill (already U-turned on), which would have cut Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments for millions of vulnerable people. The decision, announced in February of this year, to cut the foreign aid programme to increase military spending.
And then came perhaps the biggest problem of all for Starmer’s Labour: Gaza, where the UK government’s continuing support for Israel as it engages in genocide still beggars belief for many. There have been 32 mass demonstrations in London in the past two years, the most recent being one of the largest protests ever held in the UK. That level of political activity will continue, given Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems determined to avoid a peaceful outcome, and Starmer is unlikely to stand up to him or, by extension, the US.
Widespread dismay and depression on the backbenches may ebb and flow, but at this point, it feels like even a change of leadership may not be enough for a real change in fortune.
The government’s current predicament is the main reason why Westminster politics is so uncertain. Looking at the UK-wide parties, the far-right Reform UK is leading polls with vote shares that vary but are typically over 30%, having soaked up plenty of support as a substantial protest vote. If that persists through to the next general election in 2029, it will likely put Nigel Farage into Downing Street.
Labour’s support, meanwhile, is hovering at around 20%, the Tories more like 15% and the Liberal Democrats rather less.
And until three months ago, the Greens were still weak in polling terms – despite having made some progress since last year’s election – and millions on the left were still disenfranchised, having been disillusioned with Starmer’s Labour leadership.
Two things have changed; the first being Zack Polanski winning the Green Party leadership at the start of September. He has brought a more radical and left-wing perspective to the party, which has led to a jump in the polls and an 80% increase in new members. The Greens announced this week that its membership now stands at 126,000 – more than either the Conservatives or the Lib Dems.
The second change is in the fortunes of the new Your Party group, fronted by Corbyn and former Labour MP Zarah Sultana. While the party’s initial request for expressions of interest received a massive 800,000 responses – at which point it appeared likely to provide a serious challenge to Starmer’s Labour – it ran into internal disagreements six weeks ago that knocked it right back and led to a period of utter dismay and anger among supporters.
Those feelings have eased somewhat over the past two weeks, as Your Party has published draft versions of its constitution, standing orders and an organisational strategy, all of which are to be discussed and developed before being decided at a large national conference in Liverpool at the end of November. The documents, including a draft political statement, are open to all and will no doubt be subject to intense debate and plenty of disagreement, but they do appear to be a genuine attempt at accountability that is a very long way from the opacity of the Labour Party.
A typical meeting of supporters, of which there are hundreds around the country, still sees some of the anger of a few weeks ago, but now also more determination to see things through. If the new party can recapture the mood of three months ago – and particularly if it and the Greens are willing to work with one another – then there may be some hope for the disenfranchised left.
One of the most interesting aspects of these rapid political changes is the potential for the three figureheads of these two parties to have a substantial impact.
Zarah Sultana, with an often combative style, appeals particularly to younger and frustrated audiences, while Zack Polanski’s normal and measured approach is persistently disarming for Reform’s far-right politicians. Then there is Jeremy Corbyn, who is already a national figure known for a long-term commitment to a progressive agenda and a remarkable personal following.
These are very early days in a time of rapid political change. Reform is still on the up, but compared with just three months ago, there is now a lot more reason for hope on the left.
Sign up to openDemocracy’s free Daily Email
