Prominent UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson 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 last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader 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 appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated 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 “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,” added 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 change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears 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 unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
