Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, 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 “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement 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 family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling 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 permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming 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 polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
