Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms 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 Tory whip, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish 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 tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, 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.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing 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
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, 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 plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household 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 immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
