Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted 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 belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family 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 “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims 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 parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave 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 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 acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several 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 proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
