Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
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 guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” 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 desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple 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 legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies 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 hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
