Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with partners 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 broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – 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 easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
