 "Shabana Mahmood is the UK's new Home Secretary. File Photo/Reuters")
Shabana Mahmood is the United Kingdom’s new and first female Muslim Home Secretary. Her appointment came last week after the resignation of former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, prompting her boss, Keir Starmer, to reshuffle his Cabinet.
Mahmood, who is of Pakistani origin, has taken a tough stance against illegal migration. However, her remarks on Kashmir are perceived as anti-India in the South Asian country.
Let’s take a closer look.
Who is the UK’s new Home Secretary?
Shabana Mahmood has served as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood since 2010. She began her career in law, studying the subject at Lincoln College, Oxford.
She was born in Birmingham in 1980 to parents from Mirpur in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Before entering politics, Mahmood was a barrister.
She has held key roles in both the shadow Cabinet and government.
During her tenure as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Mahmood took steps to reduce prison overcrowding, including early release programmes. She also took firm positions on sentencing safety and human rights reforms, reported Gulf News.
“If you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing,” she said while introducing tougher deportation measures.
The Starmer government is facing one of its biggest challenges as polls suggest the public has lost faith in its ability to handle the small boats crisis.
“She has coped with the prison crisis pretty well without a drastic kind of backlash. Now it’s about getting Shabana in that position to try to claw back some of the ground that Labour has lost on immigration,” a source told The Telegraph.
“She will be able to deliver some tough messages around immigration because of her Pakistani heritage, which Yvette Cooper might have found much harder.”
Is Shabana Mahmood anti-India?
Shabana Mahmood has called Kashmir “India-occupied”. She also participated in a protest outside the Indian High Commission in London in 2019 against the abrogation of Article 370, dubbing it “a betrayal of the people of Kashmir”, as per a Times of India report.
“Deeply concerned about the Indian Government’s decision to abolish #Article370, removing #Jammu and #Kashmir’s existing level of autonomy,” she posted on X at the time.
In 2015, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK, Mahmood, along with the support of over 30 Lords and MPs, wrote a letter to the British PM on Kashmir.
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On Israeli war in Gaza
Mahmood supports the Palestinian cause. She has been spotted with “Free Palestine” placards, including at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally.
In 2014, she protested a Birmingham branch of the supermarket Sainsbury’s, demanding it stop selling goods from Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.
However, the Labour MP has abstained from several important votes on topics related to Israel and Gaza, including a Scottish National Party call for “Ceasefire in Occupied Gaza” Amendment in November 2023.
Mahmood condemned Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, telling her constituents in a letter: “I unequivocally condemn the despicable actions of Hamas, who targeted innocent Israeli civilians. The hostages must be returned.”
“These atrocities were committed by terrorists who do not seek peace and have set back the just cause of Palestinian freedom and statehood, which I have supported my whole life,” she said.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 in February 2024, she said, “A one-state solution does not make the people of Israel safe, it actually condemns them to insecurity and concerns for their safety in perpetuity, and it is an outrage to adopt a position that says the people of Israel can have self-determination but the people of Palestine cannot.”
However, she is expected to be “just as tough” on Palestine Action, the activist group designated a terrorist organisation in the UK in June, as her predecessor, Cooper.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, told Sky News: “I expect her to defend the decision the Government’s taken on Palestine Action, because of what some of its members are responsible for and were planning.
“If we want to avoid a two-tier policing and justice system in this country, when people break the law, there have to be consequences.
“That’s what was happening yesterday, and I, we, almost everybody shares the agony when we see the images from Gaza, the anguish when we see the man-made starvation, and for people who want to voice their concern and protest, I applaud them.
“But that does not require them to link it to support for Palestine Action, a proscribed group.”
More than 800 people were arrested in London during a protest against the government’s decision to ban the activist group.
With inputs from agencies