What changes will be part of asylum reform in the UK?

Ten weeks ago, Sir Keir Starmer sent Shabana Mahmood to head the Home Office precisely to be radical in reforming the UK’s immigration system.

Mahmood’s flurry of new policy announcements in recent days is certainly bold: from limiting refugees to temporary stays to reforming human rights laws to help increase deportations and threatening countries with visa bans unless they accept the return of criminals and illegal immigrants.

But the plans are also controversial. The Refugee Council, which supports asylum seekers, says making refugee status temporary is “highly impractical” and “inhumane”.

The Home Secretary’s team are delighted with the newspaper headlines and television coverage their adverts have garnered in recent days, but they know that was the easy part.

Persuading Labor MPs from all branches of the party to vote en masse in favor of the plans is a much bigger challenge.

MPs’ frustration over winter fuel payments and welfare reform led to embarrassing U-turns in government. Will restless Labor MPs try to change government policy once again?

That may depend on whether a politician’s electorate is threatened by reformist Britain and right-wing Conservatives, or left-wing Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Some ministers are already privately expressing concern about Mahmood’s proposals, and skeptical MPs have begun speaking publicly.

Rachael Maskell, a prominent critic of the government’s failed social reforms, told me that many of her colleagues are “seriously concerned.”

He said the government is going in “the completely wrong direction” on immigration and that its plans to change the way human rights laws are applied in the UK are “a step too far”.

Another skeptical Labor MP, Brian Leishman, told me he had “major reservations” about the proposals and warned ministers against “trying to copy Farage and Reform, who just want to demonize people”.

To minimize the prospect of parliamentary opposition, Mahmood has been meeting groups of Labor MPs in recent weeks to present what his allies call “the persuasive moral case for reform”.

But privately they admit it will be a difficult balance.

Partly because many Labor members are uncomfortable with both these policies and the rhetoric that accompanies them.

Both conservatives and reformers can feel those tensions, and both are trying to take advantage of them.

UK reform leader Nigel Farage even issued a statement to say something he knows Labor MPs won’t like: “The Home Secretary appears to be a supporter of reform.”

Both Farage and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch doubt these plans will even be approved in the House of Commons.

The government considers these changes to be the most significant reforms to the asylum system since World War II.

Oxford University’s Migration Observatory says Mahmood’s reform will make the UK’s immigration system among the strictest countries in Europe.

But that does not mean that the number of small boat arrivals will decrease.

“This is not going to be a silver bullet and I think the government recognizes that,” says Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the organisation.

“It is taking a broader approach, focusing on enforcement and return agreements. Will people know enough about the restrictions to dissuade them? We will have to wait and see.”

Reducing the “pull” factors and making the UK less attractive to migrants is a huge long-term battle.

In this fight, the government faces sophisticated human trafficking gangs that have proven they can adapt quickly.

The Home Secretary hopes her “throw out the kitchen sink” approach will gradually reduce arrivals and increase deportations.

Mahmood believes community cohesion across the country depends on it.

But so is his future and that of his government.