Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as 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, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader 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 specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined 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 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,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two 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 principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals 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 insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality 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 securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries 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 two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
