Prominent UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity 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 feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles 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 permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six 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 implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
