Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert 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 feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform 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 Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, 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 broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols 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 wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
