The insults are coming thick and fast this morning – I have never been called that before. Mainly because it’s not true. Although I quite like being called ‘dangerous’; there’s a good history of that. Dangerman. Dangermouse. Dangerous Davies. But I digress. This isn’t just about me; there were a million of us on the streets of London two weeks ago. But she isn’t talking about ALL of us. That’s good to know. I expect she wants our votes.
Shabana Mahmood has likened some of the 150,000 marchers protesting against immigration to “P—-bashers” of the 1960s and 1970s.
Speaking at the Labour Party conference, the Home Secretary said some of those who took to the streets in the rally organised by Tommy Robinson, the far-Right activist, on Sept 13 were “heirs to the skinheads and P— bashers of old”.
Ms Mahmood said: “Just days into this job, on September 13, 150,000 people marched through London. They did so under the banner of a convicted criminal and a former BNP [British National Party] member. . . While not everyone was violent, some were. Twenty-six police officers were injured as they tried to keep the peace. I think she’ll find, if she borthers to look at the details that the majority of the arrests were of the Stand up to Racism supporters who counterred us.
“It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing but an angry minority, heirs to the skinheads and the P—-bashers of old…”
She warned that Muslim hatred was currently “off the charts” and at a scale that she “had never known in my lifetime”.
“It’s not like I haven’t faced hatred,” she said, recalling hearing the word “P—” in the playground as an eight-year-old.
However, she said she was not willing to write off “potentially millions of my fellow citizens” as Muslim haters, but instead she wanted to “work out why that’s happening and where it can be answered.”
Asked about the failure of the Home Office to send lawyers to challenge migrants’ appeals against deportation, Ms Mahmood admitted her department was “not fully fit for purpose yet.” It echoes former home secretary John Reid’s claim that the Home Office was not fit for purpose after an immigration scandal.
However, she said some lawyers in the department had already had the “hair dryer treatment” from her and “I think there will be a bit more of that to come.”
Ms Mahmood said that working-class communities would turn away from Labour and “seek solace in the false promises of [Reform UK leader Nigel] Farage” if the Government failed to act on migration concerns.
Ms Mahmood warned that “patriotism, a force for good”, was turning into “something smaller, something more like ethno-nationalism”.
The Home Secretary is said not to believe that Mr Farage is racist, but that he is happy to appeal to people who are. “He doesn’t feel the need not to win their votes,” said a source.
Also at the Spectator event, Ms Mahmood discussed the grooming gangs scandal and said those in authority positions viewed victims as “white trash”.
She told the event: “The officials who are supposed to look after them have not paid the price. And what’s obvious to me is those people in authority… I think they saw these young girls as white trash.” Credit where due – she’s right on that point.
