The British Politics Thread - The Bear and Badger

Diluted Dante

monkey wrote:

To clarify what I meant, if she was brought back, unrepentant, and allowed to walk the streets, would everyone be alright with that?

She's accepted that returning to the UK opens her up to prosecution.

Lord_Griff

It is an interesting question. Those that relinquish their membership of a society, should they be allowed back in. To an extent prison is a temporary removal from society. Should we ask for Abu Hamza back?

Yossarian

RedDave2 wrote:

monkey wrote:

To clarify what I meant, if she was brought back, unrepentant, and allowed to walk the streets, would everyone be alright with that?

I think its more the UK washing its hands of a teenager who, yes, may be a bad one but she is young enough to not so much be given a second chance but the chance to be rehabilitated so that she may take advantage of a second chance if it becomes available.

Key thing is the 15 years of age.

She was 15 when she left, she’s now 21.

The key thing for me is that she’s a product of British society. She was born here, raised here, radicalised here. The fact that she has a second nationality by virtue of the fact that her parents being born somewhere else doesn’t mean that we should be absolved of the responsibility of dealing with her.

monkey

Diluted Dante wrote:

monkey wrote:

To clarify what I meant, if she was brought back, unrepentant, and allowed to walk the streets, would everyone be alright with that?

She's accepted that returning to the UK opens her up to prosecution.

Wouldn’t that be a very shaky case though? Given the age she fell into that world. Given the (probable) difficulty in getting evidence about her crimes from inside a defunct terrorist caliphate. I don’t know enough about it.

It does seem though that if you want her back facing justice in this country (the ideal outcome imo), you do open the risk that she’s just walking around the streets when that case collapses. Which is the worst of all outcomes. I agree with those saying she’s our problem though.

Funkstain

Wait. There's some confusion I think here. To be 100% clear: this case was about allowing her back in the country so she could test case the government's / Home Secretary's ability to strip people of their British citizenship.

Her argument is that she cannot properly make her case (against the ability of the HS to strip citizenship) from a foul prison where she faces torture for using a phone.

The government lost the case (again - just to let her in the country so she can test whether the gov really can strip citizenship in cases like hers), appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed with the government and dismissed her case. I believe they also made a judgement on her citizenship (also a no), meaning that she has lost her test case before making it, but I'd need someone who understands law a lot better than I to explain that one.

Anyway - this is not about her walking the streets. It's about her having a chance to rehabilitate. As Dante says she has already agreed / understood that she will go to prison. It's not complex, it's not complicated, and it's nothing fucking like Abu Hamza, who DID get several opportunities to represent his case in court against the gov stripping his citizenship. Unlike this 21 year old damaged woman in prison.

Funkstain

And fucking fuck me, if the prosecution cannot make a watertight case against her and ensure rehab time in prison then that's on them, not on this girl

Yossarian

Dante said that, not me.

Funkstain

Lord_Griff wrote:

It is an interesting question. Those that relinquish their membership of a society, should they be allowed back in. To an extent prison is a temporary removal from society. Should we ask for Abu Hamza back?

As I say above this is nothing like Hamza. But I do believe in rehab (otherwise fuck it let's just murder them) and second chances. I think it's unlikely Hamza is showing anything that indicates he's ready to be re-integrated into "normal" society so he can rot wherever he's ended up.

GooberTheHat

If for no other reason, she should be allowed/brought back because she is our problem and no one else's.

Funkstain

Also she should be brought back because it's right to test government powers under the law. I think this is a terrible precedent.

Funkstain

In other news, this sums up my view of Labour leadership right now

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/labours-focus-group-three-old-men-from-the-snug-of-a-stoke-wetherspoons-20210226205678?

davyK

Funkstain wrote:

It is an interesting question. Those that relinquish their membership of a society, should they be allowed back in. To an extent prison is a temporary removal from society. Should we ask for Abu Hamza back?

As I say above this is nothing like Hamza. But I do believe in rehab (otherwise fuck it let's just murder them) and second chances. I think it's unlikely Hamza is showing anything that indicates he's ready to be re-integrated into "normal" society so he can rot wherever he's ended up.

He is living in ADX Florence - a supermax prison. His hooks were removed and replaced with a prosthetic "spork".

Funkstain

Hell of a lot better than Begum's conditions.

So we're a country which prefers to punish teens / young woman worse than established leaders of domestic terrorist cells. Great stuff.

Roujin

OH THE UK HAS DONE A JUDICIAL DECISION AGAIN?

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Good shit UK, stay a trashy dumpster fire forever.

Imagine the stink we would kick up if british ex-pats living in Spain, gave birth to a kid, and that kid comitted terror offences, and Spain revoked their citizenship and said they could apply for UK citizenship because their parents are british citizens.

This country is a shithole that continues to plumb new depth of shirking it's responsibilities on the daily, it's fucking embarassing to watch us fill our dipes regularly on the world stage in front of all the other, sensible countries.

Bring Shamima Begum back to the UK, put her on trial and then send her off to prison to hopefully be rehabilitated. Jesus fucking wept.

An actual shithole.

Roujin

Also, if her parents were british citizens, not bangladeshi, this wouldn't even have happened imo. She would have already been brought back, because the tory cunts cannot posture to the xenophobes if its "proper" british citizens they are punishing, that would be unpatriotic and not very churchill.

Yossarian

Yep.

Yossarian

To be clear, that’s not just in your opinion, it’s illegal under something or other to revoke citizenship and leave someone stateless. If she couldn’t claim Bangladeshi citizenship, then revoking her British citizenship wouldn’t have been an option.

Funkstain

There are so many issues with this, beyond even the moral sinkhole it digs (further). One of the most important, if not the most important, rights that people have is the right to a fair trial (which was why the Appeals Court told the Gov to sod off, because how fair trial when in Kurdish prison), but the Supreme Court decided that that right is less important than the gov's prerogative to "protect the land" from terrorism. Is it? And can that prerogative be adequately shown to apply in this case, to the detriment of Begum's rights?

I'm beginning to think Lord Reed is a Gov plant!

Roujin

Yossarian wrote:

To be clear, that’s not just in your opinion, it’s illegal under something or other to revoke citizenship and leave someone stateless. If she couldn’t claim Bangladeshi citizenship, then revoking her British citizenship wouldn’t have been an option.

Correct. We are so shit that we just decide that now we don't have to give our citizens basic human rights (if those citizens can be successfully othered, to appease bigots).

Yossarian

The Shamima Begum take I’ve been waiting to read.

https://davidallengreen.com/2021/02/not-giving-the-home-secretarys-assessment-the-respect-that-it-deserves-some-initial-thoughts-on-the-shamima-begum-decision-of-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-kingdom/

Funkstain

In short it’s illiberal. I agree. For shame

Yossarian

Yep. Pretty much seems to be a judgment based on politics rather than anything else.

davyK

All is does it feed the hate.

Part of our strategy should be to not reinforce the hate-mongers peddled image of us as evil Westerners.

That's when political pressure affecting a legal matter can in some respects be tolerated.

But no - here we are playing to type.

mistercrayon

Yossarian wrote:

Yep. Pretty much seems to be a judgment based on politics rather than anything else.

I’m not convinced. I think the courts are there to apply the law and the law is pretty plain in some respects. Remember the laws are made by Parliament which is elected democratically. The point that the courts should defer to the person in charge of making the decision seems within the law to me.

I guess what isn’t shown here or I haven’t seen is what the Home Secretary did wrong in the sense that it was against the law.

The statement that if the HS is wrong (morally) and the government is wrong(morally) then we get a chance to indirectly dictate this by booting them out. Of course because we live in an angry island the angry laws get made.

Yossarian

Did you read that piece? It seems like a pretty one-sided judgment, essentially taking the government’s line into account and nothing else.

mistercrayon

Yeah but the government in power made the law basically for this purpose. It’s of course going to be tricky to come up with a decision that doesn’t match what was intended and this governments position (imo).

It’s not like the law was made a hundred years ago and for a different situation such that some actual judgement can come into play.

Yossarian

The law that she was deprived of her citizenship under was passed in 1981 before Begum was even born. It wasn’t made for this purpose.

mistercrayon

I’ll just stfu then :-O

Funkstain

mistercrayon wrote:

I’ll just stfu then

Again just to be clear - this judgement was not about her citizenship status. It was about whether she could return to the country for a fair trial, testing whether the Home Secretary depriving her of her citizenship was lawful, given she is not currently a citizen of any other country.

This ruling deprives her of her right to a fair trial, because the court has ruled that the HS was correct and empowered in his decision that the risk she poses to the country outweighs her right to a fair trial.

This is an extremely chilling, nasty judgement that I’m amazed and disappointed was a unanimous decision by the SC under its new chief lord Reed.

The link posted by Yoss has it dead right: the job of any court is to scrutinise use of power, not defer to it

Escape

Lord_Griff wrote:

Should we ask for Abu Hamza back?

Yeah, but we make him wear a brush handpiece and have him go around painting Union Jacks for Keith.

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