Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
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 mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely 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
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners 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 characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
