Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish 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.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents migrated 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 “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed 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 enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy 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 problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
