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 large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. 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 existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated 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 “absolute indictment” 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,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge 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 relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
