Green Bricks In The Red Wall

Today, the House of Commons gave a Third Reading to a Bill that extended even the existing power of the Home Secretary to revoke the British citizenship of anyone whom she merely supposed to be eligible for another nationality. She will no longer even have to notify anyone whose citizenship she revoked, meaning that there would be no meaningful right of appeal. No one will have to have been convicted of anything, or even so much as arrested. The Labour Party voted against this, but it has no policy of repealing it.

Those in danger of denationalisation will include practically the entire population of Northern Ireland, as well as the five million people in Great Britain, equal to the entire population of the Irish Republic, who were born anywhere on the island of Ireland, or who had a parent or grandparent who had been born there. It is no wonder that Declan Donnelly, both of whose parents were born on the island of Ireland, does not like this Prime Minister very much.

Richard Holden's office is prominent in Consett, and he lists his membership of Consett Steel Club in his Who's Who entry. Yet he has voted to make arbitrarily conditional the British citizenship of anyone who had been born anywhere on the island of Ireland, or who had a parent or grandparent who had been born there.