Shabana Mahmood’s intention of pushing ahead with tough new laws on asylum and immigration is already being seen by many in Labour and the trade union movement as deliberately provocative and further damaging the Labour brand.
The fury at the home secretary is fuelled by the defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-election last week to the Greens – confirmation for many on the left that the project under Sir Keir Starmer has systematically undermined “true” Labour values and destroyed its voter base.
In many ways, the move to table this legislation before the local, Welsh and Scottish elections in May, which are now widely expected to be the end of Sir Keir’s premiership, could well be the last gasp of this government.
But at the same time, it confirms the emergence of a new star on the right of the party as the battle for the soul of Labour, its future direction, and leadership gets underway.
It was noteworthy that one prominent minister on the right of Labour this week described Ms Mahmood to The Independent as “head and shoulders above the rest of the cabinet” and “the only one pursuing the right solutions”.
Just before Christmas, as an embattled Sir Keir was attempting to spend as little time as he could with lobby journalists at the annual gathering in Downing Street, Ms Mahmood was in effect being endorsed across the road at an event hosted by former prime minister Sir Tony Blair.
And in some ways, she has now become the champion of the right of the party – or at least those who crave solutions to the many problems facing the UK, not least mass migration.
One former supporter of health secretary Wes Streeting, another potential leadership candidate from the right of the party, suggested he was no longer a viable candidate because he “bottled it” by failing to back Scottish leader Anas Sarwar when he attempted to initiate a coup against Starmer over the Peter Mandelson crisis.
“Wes has already had at least two chances, probably three, and bottled them all. If no one is willing to put their balls on the line and lead, then we deserve everything we get.”
But it will be Streeting or Mahmood who will have to carry the flame for the argument made by Sir Keir’s now disgraced former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was forced to resign over the Mandelson scandal, that the real threat to masses of Labour seats is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, not the Greens.
After the disaster in Gorton and Denton, though, which saw Labour limp home in third place behind Reform in second, that is an unpopular case to make – even if it is the right argument. Ms Mahmood is at least showing she will not be cowed by extreme events like a by-election defeat by a party that wants to liberalise drug laws, while potentially scrapping nuclear weapons.
When Labour MPs on the left talk about being more like the Greens, they may need to look at the not-so-small print of what its leader Zack Polanski is offering.
Ms Mahmood is showing the courage of her principles and genuine leadership in trying to tackle one of the biggest problems of our time and offering a serious alternative to the mass deportation and Trump-style ICE force that Mr Farage and his party have offered.
But for all that, the audience for pragmatism is dwindling within Labour.
Instead, Labour is shaping up to repeat the same mistake of the Tories in finding a leader who acts like a comfort blanket for their own ideology in a limited electorate.
In 2022, the Tories turned to Liz Truss because she offered tax cutting, Brexiteer extremism and appealed to the fantasies of many on the right rather than the practicalities of real governance. We all know how that ended up.
That ideology was imposed on an electorate without their say-so and meant that even though Truss’s premiership lasted 49 days, the Conservative Party, already suffering reputational damage from Boris Johnson’s premiership, was not forgiven.
In the same way, Labour will likely reject the practicalities and centrist reasonable thinking of Ms Mahmood and almost certainly go for Angela Rayner or an alternative on the soft left who will do and say what they want to hear – taking the Labour government’s agenda hard to the left without the consent of the British people.
Such a move would be a gift for an operator like Farage who can play the betrayal card as well as anyone.
But there is still a chance for Labour to stick with Starmer or pick an alternative who can deliver his manifesto with more charisma and better leadership. Ms Mahmood’s intervention on Thursday may prove to be a last stand for that way of thinking and a final opportunity to stem the tide of extremism from both the left and right of British politics.
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