Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, 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 “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated 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 “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
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 situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and concerned 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 affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“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 most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
