Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered 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, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer 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 appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining 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 separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
