Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities 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 cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, 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 current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to 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 discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” 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. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
