Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, 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 guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” 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 talk about the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands 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 politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, 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.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
