Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
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 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.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, 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. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing 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 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 enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
