Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader 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 targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments 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 experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour 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 removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, 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. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
