Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses 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 broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
