Prominent British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested 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, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, 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 shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility 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 added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
