Prominent British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, 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 Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids 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 legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – 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 separated.
“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 the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
