Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
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 revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons 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.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – 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 split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
