Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers 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 cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory 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 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 signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for 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 mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s 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-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach 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. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
