Prominent British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, 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 the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – 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 never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted 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 unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
