Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay 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 remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish 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 ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour 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 change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies 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 victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far 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
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving 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 not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
