Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks 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 right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised 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 contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands 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 elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing 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 separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
