Leading British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families 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 distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
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 signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks 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 multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations 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 “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing 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 present debate. Lately, 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, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” 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 principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, 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 immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
