Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, 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 remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, 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, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments 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 generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous 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.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two 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 acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes 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, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
