Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings 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.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain 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 targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, 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 legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child 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 added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing 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 permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 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 adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
