The home secretary’s immigration plan is framed in punitive terms. But at least she is wrestling the debate back towards integration and belonging
In Twickenham, at the weekend, the crowd was a sea of red and white.
England’s colours were everywhere – plastered on sweatshirts and painted over faces, fluttering from flags – and the mood was unmistakably joyful. For this was of course the Women’s Rugby World Cup final, not some ominous “raise the colours” rally: a chance to remember that the St George’s cross doesn’t belong to people who daub it on roundabouts to frighten the neighbours, that there is still a kind of Englishness that inspires hope, not fear. Rugby’s Red Roses, like football’s Lionesses and Gareth Southgate’s young male England squad before them, embody a consciously inclusive form of patriotism: a message that their victories are for everyone, male or female, black or white, gay or straight.
So it was a relief to hear the new home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, articulate clearly that weekend what should always have been Labour’s line on both the English and British flags: that, as the English-born daughter of Pakistani-born parents, she sees herself in them and is “all for” their use as a symbol of unity, but not as a means to exclude and divide. “I’m a patriot, not a nationalist,” she told the Sun on Sunday. And, yes, it would have been better had Keir Starmer said something like that from the start. But better late than never, which seems to be the motto of a party conference at which Labour is finally allowing itself to call Reform UK’s new immigration policies what they are.
