Prominent British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
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 mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” 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,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming 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 change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment 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 circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation 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 legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, 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 extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
