Leading British legal professionals have issued warnings 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 Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“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 tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys 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, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
