Prominent UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies 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 group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned 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 McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing 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 spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support 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 securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“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 vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
