Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, 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 “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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 experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies 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, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
