Why is it that when anyone tries to crack down on illegal migration, the policy is called racist, inadvertently implying that the person who comes up with it is also a racist?

Sir Keir Starmer said on the BBC: “It’s a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked if he would consider it a racist policy, to which he responded: “Well, I do think that it’s a racist policy. I do think it’s immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.”

And of course, they are referring to Reform UK’s potential illegal immigration policy. And then, of course, the Labour Party came up with something not dissimilar.

People were chucking the R-word around like confetti. Here’s Home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s latest pitch to the nation.

The Home Secretary said: “On Monday, I will announce the most significant changes to our asylum system in modern times. Today I want to tell you why.

“Across Europe, asylum claims are falling, but in Britain they are rising. In the last four years, 400,000 people claimed asylum here.

“Over 100,000 are housed and supported at taxpayers’ expense, putting huge pressure on local communities.”

Wow. Can’t wait to hear what the offer is on Monday. And this morning, Shabana Mahmood was asked on Sky News whether she’d been panicked into a racist system, i.e. the Danish one, a plan which she is looking to implement.

Sky News asked: “How do you respond to people who say that you’re being panicked into a racist immigration policy?

The Labour MP responded: “I reject that entirely. I am the child of immigrants. My parents came to this country legally in the late 60s and the early 70s, and this is a moral mission for me.

“I can see that illegal migration is creating division across our country. I can see that it is polarising communities across the country, I can see that it is dividing people and making them estranged from one another.

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“I don’t want to stand back and watch that happen in my country. What is happening with our illegal migration system is this is a broken system.

“It’s not right wing talking points or fake news or misinformation that is suggesting that we’ve got a problem. I know because I have now seen this system inside out. It is a broken system.

“We have a genuine problem to fix. People are angry about something that is real. It is my job, therefore, to think of a proper solution to this very real problem.”

Great answer. She’s saying that basically she’s going to crack down on illegal immigration. And she mentioned about following the Danish model, which has acted as a deterrent and slashed illegal immigration. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, responded.

Mr Philp said: “Some of the measures I say, some are gimmicks which won’t work.

“Some of these are little steps in the right direction, for example, making reassessing asylum claims for people who’ve arrived legally every few years. Fine, that’s not a bad idea. We’ll support that.

“But on its own, it’s not enough. And we would go much further. We would say for illegal immigrants, they should not be able to claim asylum at all. So there won’t even be any need to reassess their asylum claim. They won’t be getting it in the first place.”

Interesting. Well, look, I’m afraid, unless article three of the ECHR’s protection from persecution and article eight, the right to a family life, unless they are removed from the equation, and by the looks of it, the only real way to do that is to leave the convention, then I’m afraid the Danish system or any system won’t work here.

And Shabana Mahmood fails to point out that the reason the Danish system works is because in Denmark they have third party agreements, one of them, ironically, with Rwanda, which the Labour Party called a gimmick.

“As much as I would like to believe Shabana Mahmood means business, unfortunately there are too many holes in it to stop it from sinking.”

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