Shabana Mahmood has told “white liberals” to “f**k right off” after she was accused of imitating the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The home secretary was heckled by a man in the audience during a live interview with comedian Matt Forde at a theatre in London’s West End on Monday.
The heckler said he wanted to “personally thank you for out-Reforming Reform”, followed by chants of “refugees welcome” by two others in the crowd.
“I’m not going to let a tin-pot racist or some random heckler or anybody else claw away at the foundations of who I am as a person,” she said.
“I’m a proud Englishwoman. I’m a proud Brit, I’m a hugely proud Muslim. That is the absolute core of my life,” she added.
The home secretary said claims she is imitating Reform’s policies are attempts to “delegitimise” the “perfectly valid” concerns people have about immigration levels, including the opinions of “ethnic minorities in the country”.
Claiming there are racist motives behind the heckles, she said: “I do think there is that element of it which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Well, I’m saying it.
“That’s why I said this individual can just f**k right off, because I know I belong in my own country. You’re not going to be able to do that to me.”
Mr Forde posted on X after the show that Ms Mahmood had “handled being screamed at by two posh yobs with total composure”. He added: “Thank you to the rest of the audience who came along and behaved.”
One of the individuals from Green New Deal Rising, a protest group, said they disrupted Ms Mahmood to protest her “cruel immigration policies and authoritarian moves towards a Palantir backed AI ‘panopticon’.”
Joe, 32, said: “As someone who migrated here when I was four and grown up here, I know the value migrants bring to our country – I want to live in a place that treats people fleeing dangerous situations with respect and dignity, not one that leans into racist rhetoric to win votes from Reform.
“Mahmood’s comments on our identities are her trying to make this personal because she can’t defend her policies. This isn’t about us disrupting a podcast performance. It’s about people that have live and work here, paying their tax, having to wait up to 30 years for settled status.
“It’s about innocent children, born here in the UK, being handcuffed and deported. It’s about the recent worrying moves toward ICE-style deportations and security architecture she is laying down before a potential Reform government. This is not the country I know and love – and this Labour government will see that people reject these cruel policies when they lose at the May elections.”
The home secretary is facing a Labour rebellion after she laid out proposals to double the amount of time for migrants to be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK from five to 10 years.
She also unveiled plans to make the refugee status for asylum seekers temporary, to be under review every 30 months.
Former deputy prime minister and rumoured leadership contender Angela Rayner has been among the Labour MPs who have criticised the plans.
Charities have accused the home secretary of “scapegoating migrants” rather than tackling issues such as poverty, the housing crisis and NHS delays.
An open letter, signed by more than 100 charities and sent to Ms Mahmood last year, said: “Targeting refugees will do nothing to tackle these structural issues or improve people’s lives. It only serves as a dangerous smokescreen to scapegoat the most vulnerable and distract from the very real dangers to our society.”