Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
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 cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern 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, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids 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-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, 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 Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
