Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, 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, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to obtain 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 statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean 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, experiencing insecurity,” 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 added. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing 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 permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries 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. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, 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 hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
