Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple 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 the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals 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 insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
