Prominent 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 lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson 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 mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked 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 a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed 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 the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions 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 racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing 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 last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
