Keir Starmer is, in many ways, a remarkable prime minister. He is remarkably uncharismatic and remarkably unable to discern the mood of the nation he governs. He is remarkable in his unpopularity, with the British public now even preferring Nicolas Maduro to Our Man From Islington. He is remarkable in his number of U-turns, digital ID being the latest. And Remarkable Starmer has even managed to unite the country with his ‘delighted’ decision to welcome Egyptian dissident, anti-white activist and recent British passport recipient Alaa Abd el-Fattah to our land.
By a margin of two to one, the British public think that citizenship is a privilege which should be revocable by politicians in certain circumstances
That’s what we learned from a poll by More in Common this week. They asked voters if they thought ‘it was the right or wrong decision for the government to welcome’ el-Fattah to the UK. A mere 12 per cent of people thought it was the right decision. Some 81 per cent of Reform voters and 75 per cent of Tories thought Starmer had made the wrong choice. Of course they did. What is perhaps more surprising is that a mere 11 per cent of Lib Dems, and 23 per cent of Greens thought our Prime Minister got it right on el-Fattah, and even worse for Labour, only 24 per cent of their own supporters felt welcoming the Egyptian to Britain was right.
The pollster also asked a question they may have expected to be more contentious, on whether British citizenship is ‘a privilege’ which the government ‘should be able to revoke’ in particular circumstances, or ‘a right’ which should not be revocable. This question was the subject of much debate following el-Fattah’s arrival. Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s ‘migrants rights director’ said at the time that ‘stripping anyone of their citizenship… is not a legitimate penalty and it is deeply disturbing that anyone… should have so little regard for our shared nationality that they so quickly call for such draconian action.’
Meanwhile, Chris Doyle, of the Council for Arab-British Understanding said, ‘Politicians calling for the stripping of people’s citizenship on a bandwagon is not a path to go down. Citizenship is a right’. David Davis, Tory MP and former cabinet minister, indicated that while he was not entirely opposed to the idea of el-Fattah losing his citizenship, ‘it should not be in the gift of politicians’ to remove it, which made me wonder who he thinks such a power should sit with.
My view was, and is, that el-Fattah, and many like him, are not British in any real sense and are merely holders of British passports. We would have a stronger, more unified nation if we denaturalised people like him and stopped throwing out citizenship like confetti.
It seems, from the polling, that the British people are closer to my view than Amnesty’s. By a margin of two to one, the British public think that citizenship is a privilege which should be revocable by politicians in certain circumstances. A majority of the supporters of every party share that view – 79 per cent of Tories, 76 per cent of Reform, 64 per cent of Lib Dems, 57 per cent of Labour and even 54 per cent of Green party voters are in favour of revoking citizenships.
As is often the case, the British public are far ahead of our political class, with politicians scurrying to catch up. In August we learned that almost half of Brits support remigration – ‘admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave’.
The electorate are wiser than our political class. The financial case for mass migration has been demolished, we know that much of it drives an increase in certain crimes, and it impacts housing costs while suppressing wages and deterring investment in automation.
Given all this, it makes no sense to retain as citizens, or even residents, people who have no real ties or loyalties to Britain, will forever be a drain on taxpayers, often bring conflicts from far-off lands to our doors, and who believe in dangerous ideologies which threaten our safety. Denaturalisation like remigration, is inevitable. The electorate already know this. But I doubt Remarkable Starmer will ever catch up with them.
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