Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks 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. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, 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, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“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 removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries 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 plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups 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 migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
