Dare we go the full Danish with a 'zero refugee' zone?

In many international arenas, the UK likes to present itself as a model with something akin to a divine right to “lead”.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

So it is refreshing to find at least one member of the current government looking to see what international examples the UK might usefully follow. Step forward, home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who is about to announce changes in the immigration and asylum system that are borrowed, to some degree at least, from Denmark.

Why Denmark? In the simplest of terms, because Denmark, under left-of-centre PM Mette Frederiksen since 2019, offers a unique combination of a European country with a social democratic government that has managed to reduce the number of migrants and asylum seekers to a 40-year low by dint of rigorous legislation and enforcement, while mostly staying on the right side of the Geneva Conventions and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The left-of-centre government element is crucial, because it stands to give the UK's Labour government cover for measures that would otherwise be condemned as exclusive to the far right. Danish ministers do not entirely reject this argument, but they have a reply: by addressing public concerns about levels of legal and illegal migration, their government has effectively bought the freedom to implement its socialist agenda elsewhere. So this is a way for the left not only to keep the far right out of power - unlike what has happened in other countries – but to remain true to its liberal left agenda.

For a Labour government under pressure from Reform UK, specifically on the subject of migration and asylum, the attractions of a Danish solution are clear. The question might be: why did the last Conservative governments, or indeed the last Labour home secretary, Yvette Cooper, not look towards Denmark?