Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
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 cancelled, to guarantee 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 current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” 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 the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave 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 multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support 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 obtaining 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 separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
