Prominent British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, 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 feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” 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 Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living 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 deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
