Good morning. First, a bit of housekeeping. I return to my community affairs beat on Monday, so what better First Edition to end my secondment on than a story about immigration and asylum.
Until now, refugees who came to the UK and were found to have a genuine case for protection could previously settle here permanently. Now, for the first time in British history, that will no longer be the case.
Labour’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has rewritten the government’s asylum rules so that from Monday every refugee will be told their status is temporary and will last just 30 months. It is part of a package of tough immigration reforms that Mahmood has described as the “most sweeping changes … in a generation”.
The reforms are inspired by the hardline Danish model. Mahmood flew to Copenhagen and visited detention centres there. Our home affairs editor Rajeev Syal was part of the press pack that followed her. Today, we dig into what exactly is in the reforms, what Mahmood hopes to achieve, and how those hopes might clash with reality. That’s after the headlines.
Five big stories
Middle East | Israel’s military has ordered the entire population of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate, as it continued to bomb Lebanon and Iran, while Tehran launched retaliatory strikes against Israel and US bases across the region.
Immigration | Shabana Mahmood has put herself on a collision course with Labour MPs after announcing a set of changes to the immigration system that one backbencher said mimicked Donald Trump.
UK politics | The MP whose husband was arrested this week on suspicion of spying for China has resigned the Labour whip while an internal investigation is carried out.
Child welfare | Campaigners have accused the UK government of in effect allowing child abuse to continue by having an “inconsistent and arbitrary” approach to implementing recommendations from a seven-year statutory inquiry.
US news | Donald Trump has fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, capping weeks of complaints about her leadership and reports she was involved in a personal relationship with a top deputy.
In depth: ‘The point is to look hard in the hope it deters people from coming’
Mahmood’s immigration reforms have already sent jitters through parts of the Labour party. The home secretary has repeatedly argued the changes are necessary to hold together the country’s social fabric.
“Shabana Mahmood and Keir Starmer know that they’ve got a fight on their hands with the parliamentary party over immigration,” Rajeev Syal says.
For much of its history, Labour has cast itself as the party of human rights and international law, rooted in a leftwing tradition aligned with anti-racist politics, Rajeev says. But the political landscape around immigration has shifted in recent years, shaped by two major waves of migration: the expansion of the EU under Tony Blair, and the post-pandemic surge under Boris Johnson.
Some of the backlash is driven by hostility to migrants. But some reflects pressure on public services that have not expanded at the same pace as the growing population.
Mahmood is trying to bring the Labour party behind a tougher stance. But, Rajeev says, events have complicated that strategy. “What they didn’t count on was the Green party winning the Gorton and Denton byelection last week.”
Since then, MPs who had kept their heads down on immigration have begun speaking out. “These MPs are saying maybe we are going too far and this might lose us as many votes as it wins us.”
***
The reforms
Mahmood has announced a series of immigration changes in recent weeks. They include:
• Refugees granted asylum will receive protection for 30 months at a time, after which their case will be reviewed. If their home country is deemed safe, they may be expected to return.
• The time some migrants must wait before they can settle permanently in the UK will double, from 5 years to 10.
• Up to 21,000 asylum seekers who have waited more than a year for a decision could be allowed to enter the jobs market so they can support themselves.
• Some refused asylum seeker will be offered £10,000 per person, or up to £40,000 per family, to leave the UK voluntarily under a pilot scheme.
• The UK will stop issuing study visas to people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, and will also halt skilled worker visas for Afghan nationals.
Mahmood has drawn heavily on the Danish approach to immigration, introduced by Denmark’s centre-left government in 2019. The Danish Social Democrats, like Labour, grew out of the trade union movement and an industrial working-class base.
Mahmood was drawn to the Danish approach to immigration and their strategy to reassure traditional working-class voters that immigration would be controlled, says Rajeev, adding that in Denmark, parts of the left felt it needed to show it could manage migration if it wanted to keep that electoral coalition together.
“Her argument is that it’s better for the Labour party to bring in these Danish-style rules, enforce them and deal with the issue of migration in a harsh but fair way, rather than Reform getting in and ripping it all up,” Rajeev says.
Her allies point to polling from More In Common showing that a majority of Labour and Green voters supported many of Mahmood’s proposals.
But questions remain about details, particularly when it comes to children. Rajeev says ministers have indicated they are considering specific rules, but none have been set out yet. There are still unresolved issues, he notes, including what happens if parents are removed but their children have a different legal status.
***
The reality
Mahmood’s reforms will also create a significant amount of bureaucracy for the Home Office and for refugees. Rajeev questions how workable the policy will be in practice. Under the new rules, refugees would have their status reviewed every 30 months. But with about 100,000 people arriving last year to claim asylum, he notes that reassessing cases at that scale would require a vast administrative effort.
“The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said if this was done rigorously it would be quite an operation,” Rajeev says.
Yet when Rajeev asked Mahmood how the system would be funded, she said there were no plans to set aside any additional money. That leads him to suspect the policy may largely be about signalling. “The point is to look hard and look unfriendly,” he says, in the hope it deters people from coming.
Researchers at Oxford’s migration observatory told Rajeev that Denmark’s version of the policy has been used sparingly. Of about 30,000 Syrian refugees in the country, only about 1,200 cases were reviewed and a few hundred statuses revoked. As of early 2024, none had been reported to have been deported to Syria.
“It was a bit of a PR exercise,” Rajeev says, “but the threat was hanging over refugees.”
Part of the equation, it seems, is to put off asylum seekers – many of whom will presumably have genuine applications and be entitled to asylum. The Danish model saw a sharp fall in asylum applications after it was introduced. In 2014, 14,792 people applied for asylum in Denmark, many from Syria and Eritrea. By 2021 that number had dropped to 2,099, and in 2024 it stood at 2,333.
But Rajeev argues it would be wrong to assume Denmark’s experience can simply be replicated in Britain. Many people seeking refuge in the UK come from former colonies or places where English is widely spoken, including Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran.
“Is introducing this kind of threat without actually putting any money behind it doing much?” Rajeev asks. “I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
***
The rhetoric
There have been reports that Mahmood has been told to “rein in” her rhetoric on immigration by No 10, something her allies deny. With recent polls showing the Greens ahead of Labour, there are growing concerns inside the party about losing support among minority voters and progressives.
About 100 Labour MPs have signed a private letter to the home secretary raising concerns about plans to make refugee status temporary. Written by Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP for Folkestone and Hythe, the letter argues the move would “undermine the government’s integration and cohesion objectives” by “leaving open the possibility of forced removal of settled refugees even after 20 years of lawful residence”.
“I think there’s a lot of people in the Labour party that are going to be very upset,” Rajeev says.
But, he adds, “I don’t think Shabana Mahmood really minds having a row with what’s perceived to be the left of the Labour party.”
Rajeev says the government is ultimately trying to avoid defeat on the issue, though the pushback within Labour appears to have made ministers think again.
After Labour’s defeat in the Gorton and Denton byelection, some MPs said Muslim voters in particular had raised anger about Mahmood’s immigration policies on the doorstep.
Much of the unease centres on the question of permanent settlement and who ultimately becomes a citizen, an issue that has also proved contentious in Denmark. Rajeev recalls speaking to a Red Cross worker there, just yards away from the home secretary, at a detention centre.
“The Red Cross was saying that integration is a real problem because of a lack of status,” Rajeev says. “What’s the motivation to integrate and to become part of society if you think that you could be removed at some point? You’re more inclined to just stick with your community if you think there’s a chance that you’re going to leave after 30 months.”
What else we’ve been reading
For those of us of a certain age, the prospect of being with a load of adults belting out primary school bangers like Shine Jesus Shine and Give Me Oil in My Lamp will either trigger nostalgia or nausea. Martin
Arwa Mahdawi writes her column this week on the signs that Kamala Harris may run for president again in 2028 – and she has a simple, two-word request: “Please, no.” Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team
Keza MacDonald reviews Pokémon Pokopia where you work with a bunch of lovable Pokémon to restore a long-abandoned town. Martin
Lovely piece here on Guardian readers’ favourite TV couples. Some classics, some good niche choices … but, wait? No one said Luke and Lorelai off of Gilmore Girls? Charlie
Jennifer Shahade tells Donald McRae “There’s a long and embedded history of abuse in chess” in one of his typically thought-provoking interviews. Martin
Sport
Cricket | India survived a brilliant hundred from Jacob Bethell and moved within one win of becoming the first nation to claim back-to-back men’s T20 World Cup titles after beating England by seven runs in a nail-biting semi-final.
Football | The spectre of Premier League relegation loomed ever larger for Tottenham Hotspur after a 3-1 home defeat by Crystal Palace left them teetering just above the drop zone.
Tennis | Emma Raducanu says she is determined to wrest back control of her style of play, with the British No 1 eager not to be bound by the diktats of a single coach.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now
Film
The Bride! | ★★★★☆
This new monster’s-wife tale is a rackety, violent black comedy with twists of Rocky Horror and extended homages to the top-hat-and-tails sophistication of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. It’s also a gangster joyride from the roaring 20s and 30s with Mr and Mrs F-M reimagined as a kind of post-death Bonnie and Clyde. It takes as its premise the idea that Mary Shelley is an angry ghost, spewing out into the shadowy netherworld her patrician contempt for the mediocre menfolk that surrounded her in life, and longing for a suitable living woman to insinuate herself back into. Peter Bradshaw
TV
DTF St Louis | ★★★★☆
David Harbour stars in a deliciously dark dating app drama that is close to the bone after his real-life Lily Allen fallout. But his performance along with Jason Bateman and Linda Cardellini’s make for a wonderfully bingeable show. DTF St Louis asks whether sex can solve anything. Is sexual dissatisfaction ever just that or is it always a proxy for a greater emotional need or harbinger of an existential crisis? And can exploring your every kink (and there are a mixture of sexy and hilarious intimate scenes across the seven episodes) with someone new at least take your mind off things for long enough to get you through another day? And isn’t it worth a try? Lucy Mangan
Music
Harry Styles: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally | ★★★☆☆
Painting everything in muted shades is a risk that intermittently pays off. On the plus side, it gives what’s here a unified atmosphere – it feels like an album, rather than a collection of tracks – and there are moments when the songs lure the listener in with their finely crafted subtleties: Season 2 Weight Loss’s echoing breakbeat, ghostly backing vocals and splashes of analogue synth; the closing Carla’s Song, on which Styles’s voice and gauzy electronics float over a techno-paced four-four pulse; the pizzicato strings and intimate vocals of Coming Up Roses. But there are points where it feels like it’s all mood and no material, where subtly lit songs pass by pleasantly enough, but don’t really linger in your memory afterwards. Alexis Petridis
Theatre
Arthur Miller: Broken Glass at the Young Vic, London | ★★★★☆
Some might say that Arthur Miller’s 1994 play is less often staged for good reason. Broken Glass is about the unhappy marriage of a Jewish American couple in Brooklyn and also about America’s inaction in the face of rising Nazi terror. You see the play straining to tie those two parts together – and yet this production becomes hypnotic and horrifyingly resonant. The interweaving of the personal, political, social and sexual seems inchoate, but there is so much emotive power in Jordan Fein’s production, such extraordinary performances by Eli Gelb and Pearl Chanda, and so many chilling parallels to current political indifference to the horrors around the world, that the play’s lack of internal coherence becomes irrelevant. Arifa Akbar
The front pages
“Israel tells 500,000 to flee Beirut ahead of airstrikes” is top story at the Guardian. “Trump: I must help to choose Iran’s next leader” says the Times, “Starmer: US must negotiate with Iran” is the Telegraph splash, and the FT has “US to tap Ukraine for Iran interceptors”. The Mail frames Starmer’s Iran war strategy as “Desperate and deluded”, the Mirror says “State of alert” and the i paper headlines on “Panic in Dubai: expats and tourists shelter in basements as war with Iran escalates”. The Economist cover says “A war without strategy”. The Sun has “Huntley blinded”.
Today in Focus
The Jesse Jackson I knew
Opinion executive editor Huigh Muir charts Jackson’s rise from a poor family in South Carolina to one of the most influential figures in 20th-century American politics.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
Children’s edition
To end today, something a bit different – the First Edition team on the outfits their children wore in honour of World Book Day yesterday, and what they would have worn if Guardian towers engaged in such frivolity.
My son went as a strawberry (his favourite fruit) soon to be gobbled up by the Hungry Caterpillar, his favourite book. I’d go as Chris Haughton’s heroic mother penguin: diving, climbing, narrowly avoiding seals and still getting home to her little one. Aamna.
My children long ago outgrew the dressing-up ritual, but the most successful (and reusable) costume was when their mother made a cardboard box into a wearable Horrible Histories. I’d probably come as a character from Doctor Who and the Daleks. Martin.
A tiger costume we already own seems an easy win, until it’s put on and the legs come up short. And after the trousers that she insists must be worn over the top for her preschool football are added – with the tail tucked in to them – all in all it’s a rather odd-looking character that growls through the school gates. As for me, if only I could have dug out an appropriate gorilla outfit, I’d have come as the eponymous surprise visitor from Anthony Browne’s gorgeous tale. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
As an apparent connoisseur of dog biscuits as a child, I would probably say I’d dress up as Hairy Maclary (from Donaldson’s Dairy). I like the idea of calling round for all my mates and taking them for a jolly. Katy Vans, deputy production editor
We’re a Julia Donaldson household, with Zog and the Flying Doctors a firm favourite with our eldest. The week held some tense back-and-forth: did he want to dress up as Princess Pearl, Sir Gadabout or the golden-star-winning main man himself? In the end he settled on a hybrid of all three. Personally, I’d have just plumped for Jonty Gentoo. Man, I love that little penguin. Sam Coare, subeditor
It would take the kind of construction skills I definitely don’t possess but, seeing as it was one of my favourites as a kid, I’d be shuffling into the office as The Giant Jam Sandwich … if I made it through the revolving doors, that is. Lucinda Everett, subeditor
If you want to pick up any of these titles head to the Guardian Bookshop.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
