Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker 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 opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, 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 desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, 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 issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend 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 think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
