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tony blair has effectively supported Shabana Mehmood He was praised as “brilliant” and “impressive” as a future Labor leader in a joint public appearance with home Secretary,
former workers Prime Minister hosted a Christmas event for Tony Blair Institute (TBI) with Ms Mahmood, which she used to deliver an emotional personal and political manifesto.
Amidst widespread speculation that Sir keir starmer The Prime Minister may be forced to step down, Ms. Mahmood has emerged among the leading contenders Set to succeed him, Sir Tony said he was “thrilled” to have the chance to interview him.
The TBI event took place in a prestigious hotel in Whitehall, just across the street from where the Prime Minister was simultaneously hosting journalists to lobby in Downing Street.
Sir Tony praised his “radical” style and “political philosophy” behind the crackdown immigrationContrasted this with his approach to power.
Ms Mahmood used the prestigious Labor platform to talk about her struggle overcoming social media abuse to identify as a “brown Muslim woman”.
She wouldn’t want to succumb to “a couple of idiots on Twitter.”
With Labor struggling in the polls, his name has been mentioned along with Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner as one of those who could replace Sir Keir in Downing Street in the new year.
In a spontaneous display, the Home Secretary joked that the criminal gangs behind illegal immigration were so clever that if they had set up traditional businesses, Britain’s economic ills would soon have ended.
And he said that information from voters in his Birmingham Ladywood constituency about “fraudulent care home” immigration scams and abuses of rules allowing spouses of immigrants settled in the UK to join them were shaping his immigration restrictions.
Ms Mahmood said the British people were “decent, honest and tolerant” towards immigrants – but only if they came here legally.
And he claimed that there was support for stronger controls on illegal and legal immigration from both “white and non-white working class communities”.
During the interview Ms Mahmood bared her soul and compared her Islamic faith to that of devout Christian Sir Tony, and said it was her main motivation for joining the Labor Party.
However, unlike him, she was proud to talk about the importance of her religious beliefs, she said.
He recalled the famous occasion when a journalist asked Sir Tony, as Prime Minister, about his Christian beliefs, only for his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, to interject: “We don’t do God.”
“Is Alistair Campbell here?” Asked Ms Mahmood at the event organized by tony blair Institute. “You and I can serve God – that’s good,” he told Sir Tony.
She added: “My faith, in fact, has also called me to public service. So it’s less about the party… and it’s more that I was… serving my people.”
“I believe that life is a test, and you are accountable to God for how you use the privileges that you were gifted by God at birth, and that really inspires me.”
Speaking about her determination to defy racist critics, she said: “People have been trying to put me down for a long time because being a brown Muslim woman in politics is not an easy thing in itself.
“I have thwarted every attempt to distract me, to silence me, to put me down.”
She faced “terrible campaigns”, but emerged stronger because of her “I refuse to lose” attitude.
Ms Mahmood “has sacrificed a lot to get here” and refused to be silenced by “some idiots on Twitter”.
“There is no racist on this land or anywhere in the world who would make me feel like I don’t belong in my country.”
Immigration laws, he said, are being “abused to an enormous extent” and the public “feels quite disturbed about it.”
Voters had a right to feel angry when rules were broken “because in this country, the two things we value above everything else are fairness and contribution.
“We’re very keen to give people a chance in our country, to be part of us and become one of us. If I think people feel, ‘Okay, that’s fair, you came through the proper way,’ and if they feel ‘you’re contributing’… then it highlights the generosity of the British people.
“Our country is full of very civilized people who are generous, very open-minded and tolerant. But there are certain conditions for that openness to open up.”
He said immigration control has the support of all communities.
“I represent a part of the world that is majority nonwhite, so I see immigrant working-class communities reacting in exactly the same way as white working-class communities do to issues of both legal and illegal immigration.”
Whistleblowers in her constituency informed her that “fraudulent care provider companies are being set up…people are coming in purportedly to work in the care sector and not working at all.
“I’ve focused almost entirely on my constituency’s experience… People are currently telling me what they see as abuses in the spouse visa system: organized crime and how it’s going on in and around (asylum seeker) hotels.”
Promising tougher action in her campaign to “destroy the gangs” behind illegal immigration and small boats, Ms Mahmood said: “Organised criminals are highly entrepreneurial people, and if they were legitimate businessmen, there would be no economic problems in this country. These guys know what they’re doing. They move really fast.”
Asked how she might avoid accusations from some Labor MPs that her policies are “anti-immigrant”, Ms Mahmood acknowledged she wouldn’t win them all over – but she wasn’t overly worried.
“On one level that’s fine. It’s a numbers game, it’s politics.
“Sometimes you have to accept that within your own tribe there are people who have a different view on a particular issue, and I’m quite comfortable with that… The party is a coalition of people.”
But with the leadership issue dominating the programme, the audience laughed when Sir Tony invited her to say how she would save the troubled Labor Party.
When she noted that her battles with the Labor left had echoes of her own problems in confronting left-wing extremist tendencies in the 1990s, Ms Mahmood replied: “It’s probably the same stories, maybe even some of the same characters (like the) Militant era, nothing really changes.
“I really believe in what I’m doing. So when people try to lead you astray… it doesn’t matter how much noise you get from any quarter, because it’s the right thing for the country.”
He defended his bold approach to solving major political problems such as immigration and described it as “go big – or go home”.
When Sir Tony Blair discussed similar Tony Blair Institute With Starmer due in July 2023, a year before the election, this was seen as a deliberate move to help Starmer regain power.
Some people saw Blair’s interview with Mahmood in this light.
After the discussion ended, a colleague said, “He is a symbolic politician, which is rare in politics.”
Another attendee joked: “I think Tony has anointed his favorite leadership candidate.”
Earlier, TBI political director Ryan Wayne joked about “calling out the elephant in the room” when introducing Sir Tony and Ms Mahmood on stage.
He said: “The words I keep hearing people in the room talking about and using are leadership. So I’m going to offer my personal view.”
Then mocking Liverpool Football Club manager Jurgen Klopp rather than Sir Keir, he said: “I think he’s mishandled the Mo Salah situation but he’s here to stay for the long term.”