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 large numbers of legally settled families 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 right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, 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 “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous 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 removing 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
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“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”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
