Prominent British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful 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 Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“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 extend widely 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
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – 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 simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags 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 wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
