Home Secretary Shabana is keeping some very strange company - Vladimir McTavish

A load of Labour MPs were finding it just as difficult to stomach and who can blame them when you see the motley crew lining up to support her?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the UK was viewed by asylum seekers as a more attractive destination than other European nations

Critics who described the proposals as “straight out of the far-right playbook” were proved correct when Mahmood’s ideas were applauded by Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, who went as far to suggest that she had stolen their policies.

Is this what millions voted for when they put their X next to Labour last July?

The Home Secretary’s plans were later supported by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, which goes to show that her ideas are not only deeply unfair but probably utterly bonkers too.

It should be a bit of a wake-up call when someone as unhinged as Kemi reckons you’re on the right track. They were even approved by racist thug Tommy Robinson. What kind of dystopian parallel universe are we now entering?

Not only are the plans inhumane, they are also impractical and very confusing. Some migrants may have to wait as long as 20 years before they can apply for permanent residence, others will be able to settle after five. Some refugees may be sent home when the Home Office decides that the country they fled is safe.

But the whole plan ventures into the ridiculous when it talks about confiscating financial assets from asylum seekers. Most of these people have nothing, they have already been bled dry by the criminal gangs in order to cross the Channel.

Hands up who’s seen people crowding onto small boats laden down with jewellery and bundles of cash.

This Labour government is deeply unpopular and plummeting in the polls and sees its only option is to turn further to the right.

But it is to the left that they are actually losing more potential support. Voters are switching to the Greens, to the Lib Dems and even to Your Party.

When people voted for “Change” last July, they were voting for a more a more compassionate society, not for Labour to change into a mouthpiece for the far right.

Wake up to that fact, Starmer, before it’s too late.