Stripping citizenship with such ease tears at the moral fabric of society

‘A transcendental power more than ought to be entrusted to any man.” So observed Lord Houghton in 1870 during a parliamentary debate over William Gladstone’s proposal to revoke the citizenship of any naturalised Briton whose actions were “inconsistent with his allegiance as a British subject”. Parliament rejected the plan.

Today, Houghton is a forgotten figure. The state enjoys far greater “transcendental power” to deprive Britons of citizenship than Gladstone ever imagined. And the demand that it should wield those powers has become increasingly common. That demand lies at the heart of the controversy over Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the activist who was imprisoned in Egypt, released after British pressure, and effusively welcomed to this country by Keir Starmer.

Then, old tweets emerged – racist, antisemitic and violent – and a campaign sprang up to have him deported and stripped of his British citizenship.

Abd el-Fattah’s tweets, many now deleted, and for which he apologised last week, are grim: “The Islamic Group was right: we must kill all police officers without any discrimination”; “Zionists and other imperialists are not human beings.” “Fucking hate white people… a blight on the earth”. Some may have been ironic, most are indefensible.

Abd el-Fattah was a leading figure in Egypt’s democracy movement, imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities. While his pro-democracy activism does not make his racist tweets any less repugnant, neither do those tweets efface his history of confronting Egypt’s authoritarians, nor invalidate the campaign to free him. They do not provide sustenance, either, for the demand to rescind his British citizenship, not least because at the heart of this debate is not just Abd el-Fattah but profound questions, too, about state power and individual rights.

Much of last week’s controversy focused on the difficulty of repealing Abd el-Fattah’s citizenship and the reluctance of the government to do so. In reality, it has become disturbingly easy for the authorities to wield their “transcendental power”.

The British state first acquired the warrant to revoke citizenship in 1914. That power was used sparingly, especially after the second world war amid revulsion at the Nazi policy of stripping German Jews of citizenship.

In 1958, the US supreme court rejected an attempt by the American government to deprive an army deserter of his citizenship, ruling it “a form of punishment more primitive than torture”.

“The civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity,” the court observed, that it was immoral to deprive individuals of “the right to have rights”, a phrase, and argument, borrowed from the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who observed that people acquire rights only as part of a political community. When individuals are denationalised, they are cast out of that community and denied the most basic of rights and protections.

The tenor of the debate changed after the turn of the century and the rise of Islamist terror. In Britain, New Labour expanded the scope of denationalisation and lowered the bar for government action. Those born British could now be deprived of citizenship if they were dual nationals, and the government could act under the catch-all criterion that it was “conducive to the public good”. Subsequently, the 2014 Immigration Act legalised the denationalisation of naturalised Britons with no other citizenship, effectively rendering them stateless.

After 2010, revocation of citizenship became almost normal policy. The government sought to strip more than 1,500 citizens of their legal status between 2010 and 2024, of which 223 were for the “public good”. The only country known to have acted more harshly is Bahrain.

As questions of identity and belonging have moved centre stage, fierce controversies have followed over who can be regarded as British – and who should have their Britishness rescinded. High-profile cases have made headlines, such as that of Shamima Begum, the London schoolgirl who ran away to join Islamic State in 2015, and had her citizenship revoked four years later, leaving her stateless, languishing in a Syrian detention camp. Most individuals, though, have been denationalised with little fanfare.

This is the background to the Abd el-Fattah debate. Many critics insist that the odiousness of his tweets, and the violence they espouse, provide good reasons to revoke citizenship. Yet, disturbing though his tweets are, more troubling is the ease with which so many prominent figures demand a British citizen be stripped of his legal status because they despise his views.

Authoritarian policies have been the hallmark of the Starmer government. Many on the right have been critical of this administration’s illiberal, censorious policies. Now, though, they are pushing Starmer to be even more authoritarian.

If Abd el-Fattah is stripped of his citizenship because of his beliefs, what is to stop others, with different views, from meeting the same fate in the future? Especially at a time when there is much talk of “remigration” and mass deportations, this is a dangerous path to tread. One recent report estimates that up to nine million Britons are vulnerable to having their citizenship rescinded under current law. Accepting that governments can revoke citizenship on political grounds is to render all our rights more fragile.

Many who argue for revocation claim that it is necessary to preserve the integrity of citizenship. In fact, the opposite is the case: to allow the state to annul citizenship so easily is to take its meaning insufficiently seriously. The revocation of citizenship is an extraordinary step that not only shatters individual lives but tears at the moral fabric of society. Houghton recognised that a century and a half ago. Today, too many fail to do so.

Photograph by Khaled Elfiqi/AP