Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. 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 current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, 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, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies 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 main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “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 positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – 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 easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
