Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers 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, 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 Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement 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, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour 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 evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” 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 continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
