Man who heckled Shabana Mahmood dismisses ‘laughable’ white liberal claim | Shabana Mahmood

A protester who heckled Shabana Mahmood said she came to the UK as a child from Malaysia and described the home secretary’s claim that she was a white liberal as “ridiculous”.

Joe, 32, who did not want to give his surname, immigrated from Malaysia with his family when he was 4 years old. He said the home secretary’s proposed immigration reforms would leave him and thousands of children like him in limbo.

“Imagine being a kid growing up and not knowing if you were going to be deported from this country?” he said.

Mahmood told “white liberal” hecklers to “fuck off now” during a live interview in central London last week after protesters accused him of copying the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK during a stage event.

Before being escorted out of the room, Joe told the home secretary that he wanted to “thank you personally for putting reform behind us.” As he was led away by security, two other spectators shouted “refugees welcome”.

The protesters were part of Green New Deal Rising (GND Rising), a UK youth-led climate campaign focused on mobilizing politicians to secure radical environmental policies. Footage of the action shows that the room was dark. The campaign released a tool called “My Map” to support progressive candidates in local elections to combat the climate crisis and combat the far right.

Joe pointed out recent statistics suggesting 90,000 vulnerable young people could be kept in poverty by Mahmood’s proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain (ILR). “It’s cruel. And that’s because Labor are so desperate to take the heat off of themselves because they’re so unpopular.”

He added: “Instead of trying to make any material changes to their lives that would help ease the cost of living and reduce inequality in this country, they are prepared to throw immigrants under the bus to pander to Reform voters.”

Mahmood told comedian Matt Forde’s Political Party podcast at the Duchess Theater in London that claims he was after Reform votes were “just a way of legitimizing the point of view that I bring to the table”.

He told Forde that the allegations were racist. “I think there’s this element to it: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say something that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Okay, I’m telling you.”

Joe said the protests were about both the content and process of the proposed reforms.

Home secretary plans to end permanent protection for refugees; instead their asylum grants will be reviewed every 30 months and they will have to return home once it is safe to do so.

Refugees will not be able to bring their families to the UK until they are able to live sustainably on their own, and refugees will only become eligible for permanent settlement after 20 years.

Mahmood also plans to double the time it takes for most overseas workers to gain permanent settlement in the UK from five to 10 years.

“He is pushing these cruel immigration policies that are separating families, deporting children born here in the UK and causing people to wait up to 30 years for settled status, which is absolutely insane,” Joe said.

He argued that it was sad that one of the most powerful women in the country chose to “resort to childish expletives and self-identity attacks that are not even true” rather than dealing with these criticisms.

He hit back at Mahmood’s characterization of him as a “white liberal” who had no part in the game.

“It’s incredibly ridiculous that he waited for me to walk out of the theater before saying that,” he said. “He calls me a black, white liberal. But what he’s doing is incredibly illiberal.”

He said citizenship changed the course of his life. “The fact that I was allowed to come to the UK and became a British citizen meant that I became a tax contributor. I am involved in civil society, volunteer and contribute to society in both tangible and intangible ways.

“This is indicative of the immigrant communities who came to England and gave it color and vibrancy.”

Joe said he had heckled the home secretary after exhausting what he saw as the usual democratic avenues, including writing to MPs, signing petitions and responding to consultation forms.

“I haven’t heard from my own MP in the last three or four emails and no one else from our south-east London organizing team has heard from theirs,” he said. “We feel completely left out of a national conversation, pushed to the point where we have to do these things to make our voices heard.”

He said GND Rising remained committed to campaigning on the climate crisis and migrants’ rights, insisting the two were deeply linked.

“We are the ones producing in the global north [green house gases]“This will disproportionately affect those in the global south the most.”