Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, 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 “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer 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 Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s 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-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
