This week, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced Labour’s latest ‘reforms’ to Britain’s already broken asylum system. From forcing judges to interpret the European Court of Human Rights judgements differently, to “more pressure to deport families with children” and even confiscating jewellery of asylum seekers to cover the costs of processing their claims, the measures were met with alarm and disgust, by human rights groups and even dissenting Labour MPs declared their shock and anger at the “performative cruelty” of it all.

Some were celebrating, however: the EDL’s leader, Tommy Robinson, declared victory, “the Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots!” clearly delighted at the far-right’s ability to outmanoeuvre those in power to set the terms of political discourse. The Conservatives committed to voting with Labour to pass the reforms in case Labour MPs rebelled.

Many of us have watched in horror the ramping up of ICE raids and deportations, family separations in the US. How alarming that our government has seen this and felt spurred into a perverse race to the bottom.

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Labour may couch their cruelty in a polite commitment to getting Britain ‘back on track’, but make no mistake that these policies are based on the same racism, xenophobia and indignity that we are seeing across the pond. Public conversations about asylum and immigration cannot be separated from the culture wars on ‘British values’ and othering that relies on scapegoating people seeking asylum and cultivating a British identity that is overtly based in white nationalism.

Labour’s attacks on asylum seekers should not come as a surprise after Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a speech in August declaring Britain as becoming an “island of strangers” – a quote by Enoch Powell known for his racist and anti-immigrant crusades in the 1960s. He later said he “deeply regretted” using the phrase and had not intended to echo Powell’s speech.

Many have already pointed out the fact that these policies have nothing to do with addressing the root causes of the problems our government is attempting to resolve, namely, economic precarity and a rapid slide by the electorate towards Reform.

In the face of such brazen dehumanisation, it is also clear that there is a hope by those in charge that we will accept the terms of the debate that they set out blithely; that we will become simply numb or acclimatised to the daily indignity that floods our newsfeeds every day. That mobs attacking asylum hotels are ‘have justifiable concerns.’ It is our responsibility to ground our response to Labour’s grim policies in one of compassion and resistance to these culture wars waged against the most marginalised.