The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has accused Nigel Farage of “worse than racist” dog-whistle politics as she described how members of her family had been racially abused near their home in recent weeks.
After a speech calling on Labour and the UK to “fight for our belief in a greater Britain, not a littler England”, she said the Reform leader has “blown a very, very loud dog whistle to every racist in the country” with policies that would reassess the immigration status of people who have been granted a right to settle in the UK.
Mahmood was asked at a Spectator fringe meeting in Liverpool on Monday night if she agreed with Keir Starmer’s assessment that Farage’s policy was racist.
She said: “I think Nigel Farage is playing the trick that I think he tries to play very regularly, which is he will say something that, technically he can say is not racist, but what he really knows is he’s blown a very, very loud dog whistle to every racist in the country.
“That means he can always sort of claim plausible deniability and say: ‘Well, you know, technically, my policy on ILR, for example, looking at indefinite need to remain for people who’ve been in this country for many years,’ he’ll say: ‘Well, that will apply to white people as well as non-white people.’
“Technically, that would be true, but he also knows he sent a very clear signal to every racist in the land that those who have made their homes in this country have come from other places, might one day have their status ripped off.
“It’s a little bit worse than racist,” she said. “If it was racist, in a funny way, it would be easier to deal with.”
Mahmood said a tide of racism across the UK can be fought against, and that she had had sleepless nights after her family had been abused recently near their home in Small Heath.
“What is happening now is something much deeper and much more pervasive, and it does feel like it’s everywhere at the moment,” she said.
“Members of my own, my own family, just in the last couple of weeks … have been called fucking Paki in Birmingham, in places that I go to regularly with my family, where we hang out, and I can’t pretend to you that it doesn’t make me have sleepless nights. You know, there’s some parts of Birmingham, I’m sort of second-guessing whether I can go back to again.”
She had earlier described a minority of those who took to the streets of London for the “unite the kingdom” rally as “heirs to the skinheads … of old” as she called on Labour to fight a slide into “ethno-nationalism”.
In a speech that addressed the growth in extreme right populism and its links to immigration head on, Mahmood said that “division within this country will grow” if her party fails to control the number of immigrants coming to the UK.
It comes as Home Office sources disclosed that she is examining a new set of restrictions to halt claims of settlement from more than a million people who were granted visas between 2021 and 2024, during a period known as the “Boriswave”.
In her speech to the Labour conference, Mahmood referred to the London march led by Tommy Robinson as evidence that the far right was attempting to write Muslims and other ethnic minorities out of the definition of Englishness and Britishness.
Between 110,000 and 150,000 people turned out for the rally on 13 September, according to the Metropolitan police.
She said: “Just days into this job, on 13 September, 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.
“And while not everyone chanted racist slogans, some did, clear that in their view of this country, I have no place.
“It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing but an angry minority … but to dismiss what happened that day would be to ignore something bigger, something broader, that is happening across this country. The story of who we are is contested.”
Claiming “the patriotism of Orwell”, Mahmood, a practising Muslim, said: “Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller.
“Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British.”
She said working-class communities would turn away from Labour and “seek solace in the false promises of Farage” if the government failed to act on migration concerns.
“They will turn towards something smaller, something narrower, something less welcoming, and the division within this country will grow,” she said.
Mahmood attempted to appeal to a Labour membership that has in the past reacted against tough immigration restrictions, saying she would solve the issue of people crossing the Channel from France in small boats by doing “whatever it takes”.
“In solving this crisis, you may not always like what I do,” she said. “We will have to question some of the assumptions and legal constraints that have lasted for a generation and more.
“But unless we have control of our borders and until we can decide who comes in and who must leave, we will never be the open, tolerant and generous country that I know we all believe in.”
