Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate 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 mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, 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.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, 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?”
Personal Impact
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 uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish 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 positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
