Prominent UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
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 revoked, to guarantee 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 remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK 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 gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer 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 phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
