Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal 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, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” 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 Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation 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 an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – 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 separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
