Prominent British attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed 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 legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” 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 proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“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 examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” 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 tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, 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 plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
