Is Mahmood right – or just playing into Farage's hands?

It would be wrong to dismiss the home secretary's plans on asylum seekers out of hand but she is taking Labour to a strange - and perhaps dangerous - place

- Sean O'Grady

Are the wrong people applauding what the home secretary calls the “most sweeping changes to our asylum system in a generation”?

Nigel Farage, perhaps a little mischievously, says that Shabana Mahmood “sounds like a Reform supporter”, albeit adding that the European Convention on Human Rights and her own unreliable backbenchers will thwart her plans.

In fact, Mahmood is talking about sanctions against certain countries - Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are named - that are reluctant to accept their returned citizens. And there is every reason to suppose that Mahmood will do what she has promised to do - “whatever it takes” - as she presses on with her programme.

The obvious political problem for Mahmood is not just that she finds herself in strange, uncomfortable company, but that whatever she does to the asylum system will never be enough for some in society. Turning to the Donald Trump playbook won’t attract the disaffected classes back to Labour, while it will simultaneously alienate the very people Labour should be able to rely on. In other words, you cannot out-Farage Farage himself.