Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated 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, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks 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 feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“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-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – 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 never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, 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 continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
