Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency 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 larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, 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 contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens 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 daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“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 lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support 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 obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend 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 consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
