If the home secretary’s twin aims in making her controversial series of immigration reform announcements this week were to receive a ringing endorsement from the far right and to make migrants quake in their boots, she has succeeded – possibly even exceeded – her own expectations.

The endorsement came on Saturday, courtesy of Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. In response to a post on X which predicted that Shabana Mahmood would announce that refugees will be granted only a temporary stay in the UK and deported if their home countries are later deemed safe, he posted: “The Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots.” Meanwhile, asylum seekers and refugees I have spoken to are panicked, trembling and crying at the prospect of having to be uprooted once again after feeling safe in the UK, often after experiencing years of risk and danger.

Since last Thursday, journalists have been receiving an average of one Home Office press release every few hours, each one focusing on a different aspect of what Mahmood has described as “the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration in modern times”. But a quick investigation below the surface of the eye-catching we-mean-business sloganising reveals a mix of recycling, hype and unachievable promises. According to the home secretary, support will end for those who “game the system”, while the days of a “soft-touch asylum system are over” because she is going to tear up refugees’ “golden ticket” to the UK. There is mounting disquiet about all this among Labour voters and MPs.

Mahmood has also been keen to stress Labour’s success so far. Removals have increased, according to the Home Office, with 11,231 asylum-related returns in the year to November 2025. But many of these removals were to countries regarded as safe, such as Brazil and India, which have historically had very low asylum grant rates – not a sign that officials are bundling out of the country thousands of asylum seekers who arrived from conflict zones on small boats.

And her plan to get tough on Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo by refusing to grant visas to their nationals if they don’t play take back foreign national offenders is hardly the gamechanger she claims. Only a few thousand visas were granted last year to migrants from all three countries combined, according to Home Office data. Granting or not granting such a relatively small number of visas, despite making a huge difference to the individuals involved, will make barely a dent in the overall immigration figures the Home Office is so desperate to reduce.

Another threat is to reduce appeal rights on asylum and immigration claims to a “single route of appeal”, according to a Home Office press release. I asked if this means that further rights of appeal, such as to the upper tribunal of the immigration chamber, will be scrapped. No, officials said.

The asylum accommodation announcement is eye-catchingly draconian. It will revoke the right to automatic financial support for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. But not for the vast majority of the 100,000 asylum seekers who are in receipt of it. It will apply only to 8,500 asylum seekers who came to the UK via a visa before lodging an asylum claim. The assistance will become “discretionary”, meaning it will be denied to those who can work or have assets. It is not known how many will actually have their support revoked, and how many will be too ill to work or unable to find a job.

Excluding asylum seekers who have independent financial means, break the law or work illegally from asylum accommodation is not new, as this Home Office guidance from March 2023 shows.

As for the jewellery confiscation plan, the optics may appeal to anyone who believes that asylum seekers arrive on dinghies draped in bling. But it doesn’t apply to the majority of asylum seekers I have met, many of whom have sold their last worldly possessions to cross the Channel in the hope of reaching safety. Even in Denmark, where the policy was initiated, assets have been confiscated only 17 times between 2016 and 2022. Many, such as the Green peer Jenny Jones, are “disgusted” by the idea.

The decision to quadruple the amount of time before a refugee can settle permanently in the UK, from five years to 20, will have vast consequences. As one Syrian refugee told me after hearing the flurry of government announcements: “I feel like I’ve been scammed by the government who are clapping Reform UK and people who have racist and fascist views. I have become more scared of walking down the street in case I’m attacked by racists. I’m more vigilant now. I used to have nightmares about the things that happened to me in Syria. They hugely reduced after I got refugee status but now they have started again.”

It’s unlikely that conditions will significantly improve in the main conflict zones where refugees are granted leave to remain come from – Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran. People from these countries are likely to be left in a state of long-term limbo for a significant chunk of their productive lives, making it much harder to secure a job, find housing and put down roots. But they won’t actually be going anywhere.

Maybe the government feels that the pain will be worth it, and people will obediently stop coming to the UK. But its own research has shown what the pull factors are –and benefits, nice houses and putting their feet up at taxpayers’ expense are not among them. There is no evidence that any of the deterrent measures introduced so far have done anything at all to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in the UK. Small boat crossings continue to be high despite the launch of deterrents such as “one in, one out”. Thousands have crossed the Channel since the policy was launched on 6 August.

There is consensus that our immigration system needs to be firmly controlled, but as the Labour MP Sarah Owen says, “a strong immigration system doesn’t need to be a cruel one”. Instead of enforcing these cruel and ineffective policies, the UK should work closely with other European countries and the relevant UN bodies such as the UN high commissioner for refugees to ensure that asylum seekers and refugees are fairly distributed between safe countries, and that the precious right to seek sanctuary for those fleeing persecution is not eroded beyond recognition.

The government may in time regret receiving a ringing endorsement from Tommy Robinson. It should regret too the damage it will cause, not only to the relatively small number of asylum seekers who come here – just over 100,000 last year – but also to UK society, which will only splinter further as the language and policies of hate and division become embedded.