Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, 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 Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party 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 risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party 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 reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” 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 continued. “The principles here, the reach 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?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had pushed 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 relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries 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 plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. 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 country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
