As the Guardian noted this morning:
Asylum seekers could have jewellery or other valuables taken to pay for the costs of processing their cases, a Home Office minister has said, in another detail of changes to migration policy likely to cause concern among Labour MPs.
Speaking to broadcasters before the formal announcement of sweeping changes to asylum policy on Monday, the Home Office minister Alex Norris said while this would not involve seizing wedding rings, jewellery without sentimental value could be taken.
There is a description for this behaviour from Labour: it is performative cruelty.
The media are lapping this up.
Most reasonable people are loathing them for it.
I can't help but wonder how long some can stay in the Party's ranks.
And, in the meantime, we have to conclude that Starmer and Mahmmo0d are the best assets Farage has.
How far can these callous idiots fall? That is the question that has to be asked.
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Isn’t there a precedent for this? Didn’t the Nazis relieve those being transported to concentration camps of their valuables, to pay for their keep?
Thank you.
It can’t be that bad. There’s no mass walk out, unlike when Corbyn was leader.
Further to Mike Parr’s link to the Grauniad article by Nesrine Malik, I noted many comments BTL to the effect that we can either have a centre right government or a far right one.
Bit of background to this proposal. The idea of copying Denmark came from Stephen Kinnock. His wife began some of these measures when PM of Denmark. The seizure of jewellery goes back to the late 1930s. Denmark was one of many countries to fund and even make a profit from refugees.
Two decades ago, a colleague’s wife was part of an initiative to restore property to the families of refugees fleeing nazi persecution. A dozen years ago, I worked with a former Swiss diplomat who had been involved with compensating holocaust victims.
Thanks
And spot on, I am sure.
“Home Office minister Alex Norris said while this would not involve seizing wedding rings, jewellery without sentimental value could be taken”
In off the record remarks Mr Norris said that grannies would be supplied to farmers for free labour and ways found in which children could work productievly outside of school hours perhaps sorting hazardous hospital waste.
DLINO – Depraved Labour In Name Only.
Did Alex Norton really make those statements?
We are clearly in a bad way when it comes to this governments complete lack of ethics but those statements are, as you say, depraved.
I wonder if Norton’s wife and children can bare to be in the same room (house?) as him.
They are widely reported.
Acht!
Norris not Norton!
Full apologies to Alex Norton, the Scottish actor.
Apology for another post. A few years ago I gave a talk on soldiers who were shot in the First World war. One was Jewish who had enlisted under a different name. I did some further reading and found a Daily Mail article where the reporter described Jews pleading poverty as they landed “while hiding their gold”.
It’s a hundred and twenty years later and we see the same old stories
I assume Starmer has approved of these proposals. Just how far can you travel from being a “human rights lawyer”? what a travesty of the Labour Party this has become- totally loathsome.
when you consider how Starmer started his term as PM, he was accepting all the freebies for himself (as did other ministers) but he (and his ministers) depriving others of financial support. I agree with @Mike Parr = DLINO
It’s striking how predictable tactics exploiting human nature make people forget the real issues—rising living costs, energy bills, a fragile job market, and more. Replace “asylum seeker,” “refugee,” or “immigrant” with “human being” and the hostility becomes clear. Even if every non-British person were sent away, wealth inequality would remain, as it has even in periods of minimal migration. Neoliberalism has eroded community and fostered isolating individualism; we barely know our neighbours, and now we’re told not to care about them. Fear only isolates us further, leaving us serving the wealthy without even noticing.
I’m almost speechless. I have never voted for the Labour Party, but this intended action is surely cruelty in one of it’s worst forms. No empathy, no care, no sympathy, just daylight robbery by people intent on outdoing Reform U.K, in the false belief that they will stand a chance of being re-elected.If this is to be the norm for Westminster politics in the future, I just hope we, Scotland, can leave, before we are dragged into the sewer with these rats.
I just hope we, Scotland, can leave, before we are dragged into the sewer with these rats.
We need to Alex, or we’re next in line for dispossession and persecution. I hope that, when we do leave, we can take other honest decent people with us and show our neighbours how a nation can be run without “othering” all but the rich and the Westminster elite.
My first reaction was, “What next, extract the gold from their teeth?” Performative cruelty is the right word for it. Bread and circuses. Hopefully, any such enterprise will be defeated in court.
Now that Labour are hurtling towards full-on Nazism they will need to outbid Reform (who will probably come up with the gold- from -teeth idea. ) What about taking up Jonathan Swift’s idea in “A Modest Proposal”- take the children and sell them on the market to raise the funds needed by the adults?
Each day I feel thrust into some new unthinkable reality. Like Alex above, words (almost) fail me…Just how can a minister of the “Labour” party, for which I voted for many years, make a suggestion which has such resonance with the actions of the Nazis during the holocaust!!?? How fast down the road to facsism we are travelling!!
I’ve had two conversations with close friends in the last couple of days who are really struggling to make sense of the world as it is becoming, I do too. It is only the everyday interactions with those in my community that keep me sane, and indeed the community here – one reason why I would really welcome an in person event!
Noted, and thanks.
Tom B. beat me to gold fillings, but Shabana Mahmood is missing out if she hasn’t considered organ harvesting. Why should asylum seekers be allowed to take both kidneys with them when they leave?
If we weren’t so soft on prisoners, we could be getting BOTH kidneys, cochleas and retinas. I’m surprised she didn’t initiate that one when she was in the Justice Dept.
[Irony warning]
It’s happening elsewhere – the evidence mounts…
https://greatreporter.com/2025/07/17/exposed-israels-history-of-organ-harvesting-and-the-global-demand-driving-it/
Is it not possible to find 80 “Labour” MPs with the moral courage to declare this a despicable abuse, reminiscent of Auschwitz, to do so out loud, on the record, before Starmer makes being a decent human being an indictable offence?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewelry-seized-from-poles-in-nazi-concentration-camps-returned-to-families/
Organ harvesting…
I can barely believe it.
But then, of course I can.
Historically it was Jews that carried items of jewellery, gold and other small valuables. The history of the persecution of Jews seems to have correlated with carrying things of value which are small and highly portable, the chief ones being education and culture as they always travel inside the person, and jewellery to help you get started in a new territory.
I wonder if Alex Norris, the Home Office Minister thinking about this, has previous for thinking this is a good idea. It isn’t.
Chris Philp was on various outlets yesterday saying this was a start, but didn’t go far enough. I’m currently listening to his boss saying much the same thing in response to Mahmood’s speech.
All this goes to show is that you can chase the far right, but you can never catch up with them. They’ll always outrun your attempts to capture their positions, and while you’re chasing them you’re leaving your own support behind.
The ratchet effect only works in one direction. When you start emulating the far right’s policies you’re doing their campaigning for them.
In further news it’s rumoured Labour MP’s are going to have to agree to an England flag being tattooed on their foreheads or face having the whip withdrawn?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/nov/17/ben-jennings-shabana-mahmood-asylum-measures-cartoon
In all of this, it is only the immigration of those unfortunates in dinghies that rattles the cages of the public. So, why does Mahmood make life difficult for millions of others who came here as bona fide workers, students, or family members?
For certain, nobody(zero people) want to see lives risked in The Channel, plus there are real problems processing and looking after asylum seekers. The numbers are relatively small when compared with people coming here legitimately and then staying to play a useful role in society. That number must be several million in the last few years and up to 20 million this century. As a result, we have a diverse, multicultural society in the UK. For the Home Sec to speak about society being torn apart by immigration is dangerous nonsense and she probably knows it. What she’s doing is trying to win back votes from Reform.
She will prob succeed in doing that, while repelling Labour members and former supporters, with the net result of less votes in total. Much worse, she’s giving succour to the hardcore racists who were once proscribed completely from the political arena.
All in all, a disaster for Labour and for the country.
Late to the party, but really it feels as though the Labour Party are trying to induce me into developing Tourettes syndrome. I am so #@&+%//* angry at this bunch of thick racist xxxx%% whose best part of them went down the £££&£#@!!¥$$¥$¥$€$¥ when they were conceived.
All I see is Blue Labour. Don’t you?
And after that obscenity, we have to sit and listen to Chris Philp from numptyville talking about Labour’s small steps. Wake me up someone please.