Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend 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. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” 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 Forde. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s 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 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 vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
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 uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice 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 continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
