Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson 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 Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised 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 contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment 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 deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, 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 required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
