Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy 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 part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, 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, UK-born, 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 continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several 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 suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
