Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated 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 committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
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 political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, 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 multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches 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 “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
