Prominent British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, 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 faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, 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 contributed to 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 Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain 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 neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
