Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“These are perilous 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 living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
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 child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears 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 two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
