Mahmood fumes over ministers’ migrant visa pleas

Shabana Mahmood has plainly had her fill. The Home Secretary finds her own Labour colleagues queuing up to lobby her for more visas, each determined to ferry in extra migrant workers for their pet schemes. The sheer number of these requests has left her voicing real anger, and one can almost hear the exasperation.

Picture the scene. Ministers from other departments keep turning up with fresh demands to loosen the rules a touch further, as if the Home Office existed chiefly to rubber-stamp their convenience. Mahmood has made her dismay clear enough. It rather spoils the solemn talk of control when the same side keeps shopping for exceptions.

GB News carries the account of her frustration at this steady drip of special pleading. Britain was meant to decide these matters for itself, yet the old habits die hard among those who treat open labour flows as an automatic good. Unpicking the referendum settlement or drifting back toward softer arrangements remains the sort of folly that needs no encouragement.

The raised eyebrow writes itself. Labour ministers appear remarkably keen to keep the visa tap running whenever it suits a departmental brief, while Mahmood at least registers the awkwardness of the sheer volume. One suspects the pleas will continue arriving regardless, each framed as urgent and essential.

Whether her outburst lands is another question. The liberal consensus has long preferred not to notice the contradiction, and her colleagues seem content to keep testing the point. Still, the Home Secretary has drawn her line for now, tongue firmly in cheek at the spectacle of it all.