Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway 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 implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity 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,” continued Forde. “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 rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre 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 Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
