REFORM UK’S Zia Yusuf says Labour MPs will block Shabana Mahmood’s assault on refugees. To which we can only answer: they’d better.

Since the summer’s revolt against social security cuts MPs know they can ward off the government’s cruellest policies. A bid by Keir Starmer to punish those who led the successful revolt by withdrawing the whip merely looked vindictive rather than restoring his authority.

It is questionable anyway how frightening a sanction suspending the Labour whip is, now the party ticket repels more voters than it attracts and we have examples of charismatic independents defeating Labour candidates — even before this shambolic government took office and began alienating each section of Labour’s voter coalition in turn.

Mahmood’s “crackdown” will render an inhuman asylum system still more brutal.

It will strip refugees of the right to financial support while they remain banned from working.

Together with measures to weaken victims’ protections against deportation under the Modern Slavery Act, this will likely result in rising crime, while also fuelling a growth in informal, super-exploitative work abusing vulnerable people who dare not report it, depriving the government of tax income and depressing wages in the official economy — more own goals from an unprincipled and clueless administration.

Reviewing successful asylum-seekers’ status every two-and-a-half years loads another huge and costly administrative burden on an already dysfunctional state and will weigh heavily on our clogged-up courts.

As for returning them to their countries of origin when these become “safe,” remember how the Tories rammed an Act through Parliament to declare Rwanda safe by definition whatever evidence might be presented to the contrary.

This is a government that allows deportations to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo; its policy will subject people who have lived here for years to the constant threat of removal to anywhere the government considers it politically expedient.

Since none of this will raise wages, lower prices or improve public services, the idea that it will restore Labour’s fortunes is absurd. It legitimises Reform’s dishonest narrative about immigration levels being a national emergency, and will raise its vote, while Labour will haemorrhage votes from black communities and anti-racists to the Greens, the Lib Dems and perhaps “Your Party” too, once it has held its founding conference later this month and begun to set out a coherent political stall.

Labour MPs ought to realise two things.

One, this could prove electoral suicide in many constituencies (including Mahmood’s own, where her own majority was halved by a “Gaza independent” last year and a significant Muslim population is on the sharp end of rising racism).

Two, voting down or diluting the measures will not solve their problem on its own. Starmer does not listen and does not learn, as we saw after the welfare cuts rebellion. His government needs to be replaced, and not by candidates complicit in its dreadful policies like Mahmood or Wes Streeting.

They ought to realise this, but the Parliamentary Labour Party cannot be relied on and we need to mobilise in defence of our communities irrespective of it.

Campaigns like the RMT union’s against the deportation of hard-working transport staff or Unison’s in defence of migrant NHS and care workers need to spread, challenging the toxic narrative about immigrants and celebrating the contributions they make.

Trade unions and left-wing parties need to co-ordinate more closely with community organisations like the Indian Workers Association or Caribbean Labour Solidarity, rooting ourselves more firmly in a vibrant and diverse working class and laying the groundwork for the grassroots resistance that can stop deportations and counter any shift towards Trump-style raids snatching people from their neighbourhoods, which on current form Labour might try introducing before Reform does.

Only by organising on the street and in the workplace can we build the networks of solidarity needed.