Home secretary to announce a drastic tightening of rules, including requiring asylum seekers to wait 20 years before getting the right to permanently settle in UK
Good morning. At the 2024 general election Labour sought to appeal by right-leaning voters by telling them that Keir Starmer would not raise the main rates of tax, and to left-leaning voters by telling them that he would get rid of the Tories’ Rwanda scheme. These days there must be a lot of people in government who think life would be easier if they had done it the other way round – offering tax rises to the left, and Rwanda (or something similar) to the right.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, isn’t resurrecting the Rwanda policy today (although recently Josh Glancy reported in the Sunday Times that privately some government figures now believe that scrapping it was a mistake). But she will announce plans that would drastically tighten the UK’s asylum laws. One feature of the plans would require asylum seekers to wait 20 years before being allowed to get permanent settlement in the UK – which would be the longest wait in any European asylum system.
With the budget only 10 days away, we are now in a period bookended by two announcements that could decide the fate of Starmer and his government. The rise of Reform UK is driven more than anything by anger about the small boat arrivals, and Mahmood hopes that her plans will have a significant impact on the problem.
