Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated 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 last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
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 concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party 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 significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
