Prominent UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments 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 feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged 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 fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“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 the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous 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 spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling 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 spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears 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 plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
