Not too long ago, Shabana Mahmood, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants to the UK, used to attend anti-Israel rallies in Britain carrying “Free Palestine” signs. She was a vocal critic of Israel’s military action in Gaza. A decade earlier, as a young activist, she campaigned for boycotting Israeli goods and shut down a supermarket in the city of Birmingham for several hours because it sold Israeli-made items.

But now Mahmood is a different woman. As Britain’s Home Secretary in the centre-left Labour Party, she delivered a passionate speech in parliament on November 17 in defence of the government’s new tough asylum policy, which makes refugee status temporary, narrows the appeal process, withdraws government funding to asylum seekers and threatens visa bans on countries that block their c

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