Leading 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 lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks 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 multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added 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 benefits of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged 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 decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“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 tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
