Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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 experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past 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 heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared 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 unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming 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 co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
