UK Special Coverage UK Home Secretary Sets Labour Back on Course for Mass Immigration Shabana Mahmood’s new policies reverse the modest reforms she proposed under the Starmer government. UK Special Coverage Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images After over a year of back and forth, the UK’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the Labour Government’s new immigration policies on November 2.
They have seemingly disappointed everyone: both restrictionists who fear that they will embed large numbers of low-skilled immigrants and the Labour Party’s open-borders faction, which is offended by even moderate limits on the ability of migrants—both illegal and legal—to reside in Britain permanently.
Initially planned to be a widespread restriction on settlement rights for low-wage, low-skill immigrants who arrived during the 2021–23 “Boriswave,” these reforms attracted extreme hostility from the government’s own backbench MPs.