Something To Take Away

"I am a British citizen, and no one can take that away from me," said Arlene Foster on Question Time. Not so fast, Shamima. You were born in Enniskillen, which, being in County Fermanagh, is on the island of Ireland. Rather amusingly, your maiden name was Kelly.

Shamima Begum went off to fight for the side that we were actively supporting in Syria, and which it is still British Government policy to say should have won. But this is not even about that. Under Shamima's Law, if you would merely qualify for another nationality, whether or not you held it or wanted it, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen.

If you are one of the huge proportion of the population of Great Britain with an ancestral connection to Ireland, or if you are almost any of the current inhabitants of Northern Ireland, including the First Minister and all eight DUP MPs, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen. 

Saint Helena will never become independent, so I am all right this side of Scottish independence. But beyond the fair South Atlantic, most of Britain's former colonies in the Caribbean are independent now. And 50 per cent of people in Britain with an Afro-Caribbean parent also have a white parent. If you are in that position, even if your other ancestors have been Anglo-Saxon for as long as there have been any Anglo-Saxons, or even if Julius Caesar heard them speaking the language that was now Welsh, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen.

And if you would qualify under Israel's Law of Return, which is considerably looser than the Rabbinical definition of who is Jewish, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen. How about that for anti-Semitism? I would not support such a punishment for the 400 wedding feasters of Stamford Hill. But it worth thinking about.