Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to gain 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 comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” 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 residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, 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. 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 Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality 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 past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain 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 extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
