Prominent UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities 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 revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
