Shabana Mahmood – the new Margaret Thatcher?
Electoral Dysfunction
Sky News
4.4 • 764 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The home secretary is going hard on immigration and she's taking a lot of people with her, not least Kemi Badenoch and the Reform party.
Shabana Mahmood is using her identity – as a British Asian Muslim – to prove why she understands the migration problem in the country better than most.
So how extreme are her new policies, modelled on the Danish system? Can she persuade the whole Labour party that they're not going too far, when they've spent years calling Tory policies "racist"?
And as a tough, plain speaking and passionate politician, is she the new Margaret Thatcher? And could she pose a threat to Keir Starmer now the Labour Party is looking beyond him as leader?
Plus – Harriet thinks the chancellor will scrap the two child benefit cap entirely at next week's budget – but is that actually popular with the party? Or are Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves bending to the demands of their backbenchers?
Remember, you can also watch Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson on YouTube.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Financial advice from St James's Place sponsors Electrial Dysfunction. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to Electral Disfunction from Sky News with me, Beth Rickby. |
| 0:17.0 | Me Ruth Davidson and me Harriet Harmon. |
| 0:19.0 | And this is me with whiplash this week. |
| 0:21.0 | And no, it's not because I've accidentally pranged my car. |
| 0:24.6 | It's because every day the government seems to change direction in every which way. |
| 0:31.6 | After we did our pod and we're going to come onto this later, |
| 0:35.2 | I was about to tuck into bed on Thursday night and |
| 0:38.4 | suddenly the Financial Times front page drops and there's a major U-turn on the manifesto pledge |
| 0:45.4 | on income tax. And then we had a huge shift in immigration policy this week. So it has been, it's been a lot of news people, a lot of news and a lot |
| 0:58.2 | to talk about. Yeah, and if you don't know which way is up and think that the government |
| 1:03.8 | doesn't either, don't worry, we are here to guide you through it. We're going to talk about |
| 1:07.2 | why the government is getting praised by the Tories for their tougher stance on immigration. |
| 1:12.1 | We'll tell you what could happen next week come budget day. |
| 1:15.6 | And we'll also give you a little bit of insight into Shibana Mahmood's leadership as Home Secretary. |
| 1:20.4 | And then we'll do a whole budget preview because next week, like I said, there are some fiscal events, spring statements, autumn budgets, |
| 1:28.6 | we've talked about them before, that kind of go past pretty much without a ripple. |
| 1:33.2 | There are some that feel like they are really, really big staging points and next week is going to be a biggie. |
| 1:38.1 | And when it comes to immigration and the budget and huge issues, there's a new metric for how anxious and disturbed Labor members of |
| 1:46.7 | Parliament are feeling. And this is the corridor velocity metric. So basically, when MPs are |
| 1:52.9 | cheery and going about their business, they come back on a Monday, they're going from their office |
| 1:57.1 | to a meeting or they're going from a meeting to the division lobby and they greet each other high and walk past each other in the corridor. |
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