Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory 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 reverted to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants 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 ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer 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 surged in the surveys, 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 previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” 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 Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people 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-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 lawfully resident, and vast numbers 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 shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice 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.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
