“I will close every single asylum hotel.”
This is a recent pledge made by a very prominent British politician. No, not Farage, but Labour’s own Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, as part of her “restoring order and control” plan.
Alongside relocating the asylum hotels’ roughly 50,000 residents to military bases, this new policy would permit refugees’ valuables, like jewellery, to be seized to ‘contribute’ to their asylum application costs.
I will close every single asylum hotel. pic.twitter.com/RIxvLvWdjc
— Shabana Mahmood MP (@ShabanaMahmood) November 18, 2025
The ‘hotels’ were originally intended as a cheap solution to housing migrants. But this short-sighted cost-cutting has backfired. Private contractors are leaching billions in profits from managing these facilities. And the fact that these hotels are located in some of the most deprived communities has provoked social unrest.
Labour presumably thought they could kill two birds with one stone by using military bases: they can appear tough on migrants, while saving some money in the process. But now the government is struggling to pay for this new, expensive policy. When the state coffers are too empty even for divisive culture war distractions, we know the crisis is deep indeed.
Mahmood’s measures also include forcing refugees to re-apply to remain in the UK every two-and-a-half years. They will now have to wait 20 years instead of five before they can apply for permanent settlement – a measure which will be applied retroactively.
Legal duties around housing and financial support to asylum seekers will be revoked. And if a country becomes deemed ‘safe’, Mahmood has stated that refugees will be expected to return – even if they have family in the UK.
If this all sounds to you like a flagrant violation of human rights, then the British government would agree – which is why they have stated they will be “reinterpreting” the European Convention on Human Rights, to circumvent breaching it.
Let’s remember that the Tories’ disastrous Rwanda scheme got so bogged down in legal and financial troubles it was eventually abandoned, after costing billions to the taxpayer. This may be an omen for what is to come for Mahmood’s restoration of “order and control”.
To make these abhorrent attacks even more egregious, the Home Secretary has cynically deployed liberal identity politics to defend her policies. She has assured voters that because she is a “child of immigrants” that has faced racist abuse, this (somehow) justifies her “moral mission” to clamp down on migration.
Today, I have set out the most sweeping changes to the asylum system in a generation.
We must restore order and control to our borders.
So we can continue to offer sanctuary to those fleeing danger. pic.twitter.com/VFVBBR0d9q
— Shabana Mahmood MP (@ShabanaMahmood) November 17, 2025
Divisive distraction
Labour has long understood that they cannot fix the real crisis facing Britain: long-term economic stagnation and decline. The only way they can restore some semblance of investment into the British economy is to carry out the diktats of the capitalist class – the big bosses and bankers – which means austerity.
The problem is that their austerity measures are inciting widespread anger. Labour’s attacks on single mothers, pensioners, and the disabled – all intended to reduce the deficit in order to attract investment – have been met with massive backlash from the public.
Mahmood’s latest asylum seeker policy is simply a continuation of this long-standing Labour (and Tory) strategy. To recuperate their faltering support, and distract workers from the real issues they are incapable of fixing, Labour instead shifts the battle onto the plane of culture wars.
They have seen the success of Reform and, completely unable to understand the real reasons for their mass support, seek to outflank them from the right. Earlier this year Labour even paid for adverts in Reform colours bragging about record breaking numbers of migrants being deported under Starmer.
Labour wants to be seen as tough on this apparent scourge of illegal immigration. Shabana Mahmood in particular is eager to establish herself as a hardline ‘law and order’ figure, to show that she is willing to make the tough decisions needed to ‘restore order’.
For her new asylum policy, the Home Secretary has been praised by the likes of Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and Reform UK MP Danny Kruger – the latter of which joked that he would welcome Mahmood into Reform!
Good morning, @ShabanaMahmood. ☀️ pic.twitter.com/5OvJrQUBL2
— Reform UK (@reformparty_uk) November 19, 2025
However, Reform UK supporters on the ground have been less supportive. In Crowborough in Sussex, there have been multiple protests against plans to relocate asylum seekers from hotels to a nearby military site.
There is an important lesson here. Labour have tried to copy Reform, yet it has only resulted in even more backlash. Meanwhile, Reform’s leaders feel emboldened: they can chalk this latest policy up as a victory, and evidence that they can push the government to the right.
In reality, the hatred against Labour is so great that they are doomed no matter what they do.
Starmer and Mahmood could carry out Reform’s entire programme on migration, and Reform supporters would still despise them. By upholding the broken status quo, Labour have drunk from a poisoned chalice.
Lesser evil?
We were told Labour was the lesser evil to the Conservatives and Reform, and look at where that has taken us. Labour have not only picked up where the Tories left off, they have accelerated their attacks on the workers, migrants, and the poor. Farage does not need to be in power for the state to wage war against the most vulnerable; it’s already happening now.
Of course, no matter which policies they adopt, Starmer and Mahmood will not be able to resolve the issue of Britain’s broken asylum system – or bring under control the flames of anti-migrant sentiment they have fuelled in the communities they have failed the most.
In fact, they are the ones stoking those flames the most, by overseeing austerity, attacks, and decline.
As communists, we cannot sow illusions in any kind of ‘lesser evilism’. In reality, no party in Westminster will fix the issues facing working and oppressed people today.
Our focus must remain on organising to overthrow the main enemy: those currently in power, who are implementing these vicious attacks on behalf of the capitalist class.
