Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate 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 guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, 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 multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two 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 acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
