Comment
Andy Burnham faces his first big test… on immigration
In his determination to see the Rochdale grooming gang leader deported, the PM presumptive declared that ‘nothing is off table’ – but would he really ape Reform and take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights, asks John Rentoul
Andy Burnham benefits from a blurred image with the public at the moment. When he spoke to the Labour faithful in Manchester, setting out his vague retro agenda of devolution, council housing and greater public control of the utilities, he didn’t mention immigration once.
But yesterday, to a different audience on social media, he took an uncompromising line on Shabir Ahmed, the boss of a Rochdale rape gang who was released today after 14 years in prison, and has joint UK-Pakistani citizenship: “Like everyone, I want this vile criminal out of the country,” declared Burnham. “Victims must come first. I will ask the home and foreign secretaries to review all possible options – and they should consider nothing is off the table.”
This is the sort of thing you can say in opposition. Saying it in government is harder, and doing something about it is harder still. There is a clamour from opposition parties and backbench Labour MPs for a change in the law that protects Ahmed from deportation – the 1971 Immigration Act applying to Commonwealth immigrants who came to Britain before 1973, as Ahmed did.
But even if the law were changed, Pakistan would have to agree to take him back, which is “unlikely”, as Home Office sources point out. Presumably, that is why Burnham mentioned the foreign secretary as well as the home secretary, because trying to get Pakistan to take back former nationals, some of whom have renounced Pakistani citizenship and haven’t lived there for decades, is a major diplomatic undertaking.
Burnham’s words yesterday suggest that whomever he appoints as home and foreign secretaries will be expected to threaten Pakistan with the loss of visas, or other punishments if it will not accept deportees.
Shabana Mahmood, the current home secretary, has already stopped issuing study visas to applicants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, because too many of them apply for asylum once they get to Britain.
She has also issued a more general threat to cut visas for countries that refuse to accept returns of failed asylum seekers. So far, only Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been named as needing to improve co-operation.
But taking on Pakistan would be a big deal. Perhaps Burnham is prepared to go ahead with it, but I will believe that when I see it.
Then there are the other possible options that Burnham’s ministers will be expected to “review”, considering that “nothing is off the table”. Other Rochdale gang members, Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan, successfully invoked their right to respect for private and family life in the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid deportation. Does that mean that a Burnham government will consider copying Conservative and Reform policy of withdrawing from the convention?
I don’t think so. In which case, I suspect that Burnham’s policy will be the same as that of Keir Starmer and his ministers, which is to review all options in Ahmed’s case before, presumably, concluding that it is all very difficult.
Alan Campbell, the leader of the House of Commons, answered a question from Paul Waugh, the Labour MP for Rochdale, in parliament today, and although he said that the government is “exploring every option in this case”, he seemed to put more emphasis on the threat that, if Ahmed breaches the “very strict conditions” on his release, “he will be locked up again immediately”.
Burnham has so far managed to appeal quite successfully to a soft-left Labour audience and to a socially conservative, Reform-minded audience in Makerfield at the same time.
As they chant in the football stadiums: “Two Andy Burnhams. There’s only two Andy Burnhams.” But when the blurred image resolves into a single prime minister, which Andy Burnham will the voters see?
Comments
Post a Comment