The British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood of 15 years, a barrister, a former secretary of state for justice and former lord chancellor. Her family background is Kashmiri Muslim, and her parents were migrants to the UK. She is regarded as being on the more conservative wing of the current Labour Party.

She is spearheading a policy change to tighten up Britain’s laws on asylum seeking. She is partly inspired by the example of Denmark, which has opted to remain out of the EU’s jurisdiction in relation to asylum seeking. Denmark has instead retained its own capacity to decide how and to what extent it will deal with asylum seekers and migration under the flag of asylum seeking.

She described the problem of illegal migration to the UK as “tearing the country apart”. In terms of........

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