Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
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 revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to 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 policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of 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 particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous 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 residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
