Prominent British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative 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 existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. 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 political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route 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 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 the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past 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 affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “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. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming 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 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 relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. 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, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
