Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement 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 right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, 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 “nation of foreigners” 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 investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s 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-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, 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 new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase 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 think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
