Prominent UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
In recent months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party 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 accurate.”
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 similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s 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 most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
People with permanent residency, or with spouses 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 racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
Maya Chen is a seasoned tech journalist and software developer with over a decade of experience in digital innovation and cybersecurity.
