Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted 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 “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain 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 particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” 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,” added the lawyer. “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 immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living 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 rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far 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
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
