Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson 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 mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“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 examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” 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 positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling 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 suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy 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 concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
