Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments 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 broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances 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 represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” 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 principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants 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.”
