Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants 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 implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles 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. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows 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 adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
