Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
