Shabana Mahmood told a “white liberal” heckler to “f**k right off” after she was accused of aping Reform UK.
The home secretary was heckled by a man who said he wanted to “personally thank you for outreforming Reform” during a live interview with comedian Matt Forde at a theatre in London’s West End on Monday. Two other audience members chanted “refugees welcome” as he was removed by security.
Mahmood told the hecklers she would not be put “in her box” and accused them of trying to “delegitimise” the “perfectly valid” concerns people have with high levels of immigration.
Matt Forde hosts a podcast called Political Party
She said accusations that she was aping the immigration policies of Reform to chase votes were “just a way of delegitimising the point of view that I bring to the table”.
The home secretary added: “But it’s also a way of delegitimising the perfectly valid, legitimate views of millions of people in this country, including ethnic minorities in this country. And it’s not acceptable, right? And also, you’re trying to put me in a box, which includes a lot of people who think I don’t even belong in my own country.
“That’s why I said this individual can just f**k right off, because I know I belong in my own country. You’re not going to be able to do that to me.”
She said there was an aspect of racism to the claims, adding: “I do think there is that element of it, which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Well I’m saying it.”
Mahmood added: “I’m not going to let a tin-pot racist or some random heckler or anybody else claw away at the foundations of who I am as a person. I’m a proud English woman. I’m a proud Brit, I’m a hugely proud Muslim. That is the absolute core of my life.”
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The home secretary also admitted that she was frustrated at Labour’s lack of progress in government and blamed it on the party’s own goals. She told Forde’s Political Party podcast at the Duchess Theatre: “We ourselves in the Labour party are getting in our own way.”
When asked who she’d rather deport or taser out of opposition leaders Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, Zack Polanski or Sir Ed Davey, Mahmood joked: “All of the above.”
She was also asked about Michael Gove’s comments earlier this week when he admitted he had a crush on her. Mahmood said “the feeling is not mutual” and jokingly pointed out she had highly trained armed police officers guarding her at all times.
Forde posted on X after the show that Mahmood had “handled being screamed at by two posh yobs with total composure”. He added: “Thank you to the rest of the audience who came along and behaved.”
Mahmood is overseeing what she has described as the biggest overhaul of immigration reforms since the Second World War. They include plans to end permanent protection for refugees, who will instead have their asylum grants reviewed every 30 months and forced to return home once it is safe to do so.
Refugees will not be able to bring their family to the UK until they can afford to live self-sustainably, and refugees will only start to qualify for permanent settlement after 20 years.
Mahmood has also doubled the time it takes for foreign workers to gain permanent settlement in the UK from five to ten years.
She added: “What some people in politics are not able to fully compute and conceive of is that out there in the country, there is so much anger about the broken system that we are in danger of losing public consent for having a refugee system. Full stop.
“The element of it, which I think is to do with my race and my background, is this sense that people have an expectation of what people like me should think if you don’t stay within the box. “What I always come back to is that you can’t take away from me who or what I am.”