Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) 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.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple 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 the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“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.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated 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 relocating 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 not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
