Leading British attorneys 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 Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence 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 recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement 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.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white 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 experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to 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 residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter 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, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People 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 insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
