Over the past couple of weeks, Shabana Mahmood has launched not only her new asylum crackdown policy, but also her “story”. The two are inseparable: her story justifies the crackdown. It moralises the crackdown. And it silences criticism of the crackdown. Sold as an origin story from within an immigrant and racialised experience, the purpose is to imbue her politics with sacred authenticity – the credibility of the first person. It is clever and effective. It is cynical and disgraceful.

“I am the child of immigrants” is how Mahmood now starts her fable. Immigrants who came here legally. She goes on to tell us that immigration is tearing this country apart, and proposes policies that mean UK-born children, who have known no life anywhere else, will be deported. As she launches policies that will leave refugees homeless and without support, tear families apart, punish those legally in the country for claiming any benefits and make settlement and security a long and arduous process, Mahmood declares: “this is a moral mission for me”.

A test of logic for sure, but the story can help. You see, after being accused of “stoking division” with “immoderate language”, Mahmood says “unfortunately, I am the one who is regularly called a ‘fucking Paki’ and told to ‘go back home’.” She knows – better than virtue-signalling white people – what the trenches actually look like. And so she must protect immigrants by hurting them. In her telling, racism and xenophobia seem not themselves objectively bad things that must be combatted, but a natural outcome that occurs when too many rights are given to immigrants and asylum seekers. If only they had fewer rights, then people wouldn’t hate them so much and we would hit some golden ratio where everyone will be happier. Because immigration perception and immigration reality are famously aligned things.

Credulous observers will quiver in the face of her........

© The Guardian