Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
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 revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” 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 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 benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned 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 heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked 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, UK-born, 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 principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had pushed 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 moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
