‘That resentment is real’: Mahmood’s Denmark visit aims to hammer home tough line on immigration

‘That resentment is real’: Mahmood’s Denmark visit aims to hammer home tough line on immigration On tour of returns centre, home secretary says ‘legitimate grievances’ have to be acknowledged as part of ‘responsible’ politics T he UK home secretary, Shabana Mahmood , and Danish immigration officials strode through the bleak and chilly Sjælsmark returns centre, a former military barracks used to house men and women who have no right to remain in the country. Followed by photographers, reporters and civil servants, Mahmood was told of the strict conditions in which hundreds of people live after asylum and right to remain appeals are rejected and before many are sent to other countries. Sjælsmark, about 20 miles north of Copenhagen, is at the sharp end of an asylum system set up by Denmark’s left-leaning Social Democrat government to deter claimants. As well as those facing swift deportations, refugees are given temporary permission to stay and will later be told to leave if their countries of origin are deemed safe. Mahmood’s two-day visit to the country last week was meant to hammer home a message that some Labour MPs have found difficult to stomach: that the UK must replicate the Danish immigration model if Labour is to defeat the rise of a populist right. The home secretary has since defied demands to rethink her hardline immigration policies after Labour’s crushing defeat to the Green party in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection. Speaking to the Guardian on the day before the byelection result, Mahmood urged her colleagues to acknowledge that the UK public had “legitimate grievances” about the unfairness of allowing people to arrive in small boats and the strain on public services from excessive immigration. “There are people who are racist, who do just hate everybody that’s not white and different to them. Those people are not legitimate in this debate,” Mahmood said. “There are many more people who are frustrated with the broken system, who feel a tremendous...