Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
