I expect to hear much outrage over the decision to allow Abu Hamza to keep his British passport.
Well it certainly feels unwelcome & uncomfortable. But I would be even more uneasy about the idea that British citizenship can be removed from those we do not like (to put it mildly). Rights are pretty useless if they are granted only to the right sort of person. We are all of us wrong or dangerous in the mind of someone, even if they do not know us.
Nor is it entirely straightforward to suggest that only birth incurs an inalienable right, that marriage is an inferior ground for citizenship. WH Auden, for example, was acting honourably when he married Thomas Mann’s daughter in 1935, solely to provide her with a British passport when her German citizenship was about to be revoked by the Nazis.
And this is not a legal judgement forced upon us by ‘Europe’ & a lot of un-British human rights nonsense. The right to a nationality was enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration, supported & fought for passionately by, among others, British lawyers & Eleanor Roosevelt.
