At a time when major political parties are weaponising British citizenship and the legal right to reside in Britain, the true extent of the reality in this field has now been revealed.
Research by two respected human rights organisations, the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve, documents how the British government has deprived more than 200 people – citizens – of their rights by a stroke of a home secretary’s pen. The most prominent example is, of course, Shamima Begum, the so-called “Isis bride”.
Few will have much sympathy for someone who travelled to Syria at the age of 15 to engage with the murderous Isis reign of terror.
Yet she was undeniably young at the time, had been radicalised, arguably was trafficked, and, in case, should face the due process of an appropriate justice system for whatever she is accused of.
That cannot now happen because, in a strange inversion, it is the British government that has abdicated its duty to deal with one of its own citizens, who is now stateless and living in Syria, and unpunished for whatever she may have done.
Citizens do indeed have rights and responsibilities, but so do nations, and it cannot be so simple to strip citizenship from anyone, no matter how evil, for administrative convenience or for political exploitation. It is certainly not fair to the victims.
The fault for this is certainly not with new home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who inherited the problem and has thus far shown remarkable clarity and courage on the subject of citizenship. But a solution must be found. Now is a test of her temperance.
Given her impressive performance in the role to date, it is a test we expect her to pass. Indeed it was of great interest to see her interviewed on the subject by Sir Tony Blair – a mark of her rapid rise within the Labour firmament that surely stops just short of an anointment.
The UK is the only G20 nation to have deprived its own people of such a basic right to such an extent. In the half-century before 2002, indeed, there were no such cases. Yet now, given the trend in rhetoric and policy displayed by Reform UK, the Conservatives and indeed the Labour government, British citizenship is to be both harder to obtain for lawful long-term residents and far easier to deprive someone of – presenting a particular danger to those with dual citizenship.
This is far from alarmist, as shown by the painful story of how people in the Windrush generation found themselves being treated under the “hostile environment” regime implemented by the then home secretary, Theresa May.
According to the charities, as many as 9 million people are still vulnerable to having their citizenship removed under a secretive system where any Briton with dual nationality, or indeed any naturalised citizen, could be stripped of their rights, often with little to no access to the evidence.
There is no doubt that the way the law is currently structured applies an obvious racial bias. As the charities point out, some 62 per cent of Black British people, for example, could risk being deprived of their citizenship, compared with just 5 per cent of White British people who found themselves in a similar position.
Citizenship is fundamental to the cohesion of a nation state. Yet what has been seen recently is an increase in policy proposals, from Reform UK and Ms Mahmood, which is a distortion of the whole concept. All the main parties, for example, now actually want to make it harder for those who come to Britain to make a life for themselves – a perfectly honourable thing to do – become truly “British”.
Language tests, a quirky general knowledge exam and longer and longer residency requirements make it that much harder for people to “integrate” into society fully – a rather cruel and ironic catch-22 trap.
Reform says if it were in power, only British citizens would be able to claim benefits; but “foreigners” would still have to pay income tax, VAT when they go to the shops, and stamp duty when they buy a home. By contrast, a British citizen living next door who has never contributed much to the Exchequer, or society more widely, can claim from the system.
The British ask a good deal from people not born in the country before they can be issued with a passport, but nothing at all from those who were born on British soil and without any claim to alternative citizenship – even if they commit the most heinous crimes abroad, they cannot be renounced by the home secretary and prevented from returning home.
Citizenship is an increasingly vexed concept. Even in America, where birthright citizenship is enshrined in the constitution, it is now being questioned by the US president himself (whose mother was Scottish). It should instead be something that commands a consensus about what it means, both to the individual and to the country. One principle should be that once granted, it should not be rescinded, except if it was obtained by fraud; and there should be an analogous approach to “indefinite leave to remain”, a promise that should also be kept indefinitely.
A country has an expectation that its citizens will honour its laws and bear true allegiance, but the contract applies both ways.
