My eldest son turns 14 this month, approaching the troublesome part of his teens. He’d best watch his step. If he performs a drunken prank that sufficiently displeases the home secretary of the day, then he or she can strip away his citizenship, a penalty that cannot be inflicted upon me. It’s reserved for the children of immigrants – or, more specifically, those who qualify for another passport (my wife is Swedish, so he does). His British citizenship is not a right, like mine, but a privilege that can be revoked.
Boris Johnson will soon change this law, making it even tougher by abolishing the right of targets to be notified in advance. It’s the latest power-grab from his Government and is intended for the likes of Shamima Begum, who left London to join the Islamic State. Rather than try her here, Sajid Javid decided to strip her of her citizenship and suggest she get a passport from Bangladesh (where her parents are from). A controversial decision among those who think that British citizenship ought, at the very least, to guarantee British justice.
All this can be seen as part of a trend: the strange rise of illiberal conservatism. This week we lost the right of law-abiding citizens to go where they please without being asked by the state to prove their identity (and immunological status). “We are not a papers-carrying country,” said Matt Hancock when he was promising us that NHS records would never be used to create a vaccine passport system so as to better protect freedom.
You might protest against all this, but you’d better be quick. Demonstrations causing “serious annoyance” will soon be illegal – a new, arbitrary test that is left for the Home Secretary to define. Given how easily No 10 seems to get annoyed nowadays, it could be quite a low bar. The new punishments will range from a £2,500 fine to three months in prison. If you’re “recklessly causing public nuisance” it can be 10 years.
If you decide to object to all this at the ballot box, you’ll find that vote will soon be denied to those unable to produce a state-approved form of identity. For generations, one of the glorious quirks of British liberty has been the right to walk into a polling booth, give your name and vote without being obliged to prove who you are. This right will soon be abolished: another reminder of who’s in charge. Step by insidious step, Johnson is changing the law to make Big Brother a little bit bigger, angrier and less tolerant of opposition.
I very much resent the idea of my children being regarded as downgradable citizens simply because their mum was born in Stockholm. Unless one of them flies off to wage jihad in the Sahel, he’s unlikely to have his passport revoked – so you can argue that, really, I have nothing to worry about. That it’s intended for other (ahem) members of the community, so I should just look the other way. The same with voter ID: why would any sensible law-abiding (or Tory-voting) person be worried?
The answer is that equality under the law is a principle worth defending. “Freedom” should mean freedom for everyone, whether or not they are in the habit of carrying ID. The right to go where you like, marry who you like, say what you please – it all matters. We don’t need to quote Bagehot or the Magna Carta to make this point. We have the words of a more contemporary politician who, over decades, made the case better than almost anyone.
He’d never get bogged down in the details of vaccine passports but would instead eviscerate the philosophy behind them. “I loathe the idea on principle,” he once said. “I never want to be commanded, by any emanation of the British state, to produce evidence of my identity.” The job of the Tory was to ensure that the “frail cockade of freedom” was not “emphatically crushed by the giant descending rump of matronly authority”. He was even up for civil disobedience back then: if he were “compelled” to produce any ID by the police he would take it out and “destroy it on the spot”.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar Boris Johnson quotes in defence of liberty which, together, made a still-compelling case against what he’s doing now. Tory rebels last Tuesday could have spent all day quoting his own words back at him.
Those who were inspired by his manifesto of a “liberal Conservative” (his words) were most likely to back him for leader – and most likely to rebel against him on Tuesday. Not because they’re suddenly against him but because they have the courage of his (old) convictions.
This is not about ideology. If vaccine passports had been proven to impede transmission, the Prime Minister could have presented his evidence and won over critics. But he instead relied on Labour votes, a heavy-handed tactic which is becoming typical. His response to the sleaze watchdog’s finding against Owen Paterson was to order his MPs to overturn the verdict. It’s not that he’s power-crazed, just a little too addicted to his big majority and seeing it (or the army) as the answer to difficult questions.
Johnson’s great trump card, so far, has been his popularity. But now, he’s less popular than any Prime Minister at a similar stage of his premiership since John Major in the aftermath of Black Wednesday. It’s hard to see this improving. After promising to cut taxes, he is planning to raise them to a 70-year high. The man who led the fight against ID cards is now requiring us to have ID to vote and a pass to enter a nightclub. Little wonder that those who backed him – in Parliament and in 2019 – are feeling discombobulated.
Dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic would require any politician to make some compromises that they’d feel uncomfortable with, but the Prime Minister’s illiberal turn goes much further than Covid restrictions. What he needs to remember now is that any powers he takes for his government will eventually be used by another. After all, he was born in New York. Does he really want to give the next Labour home secretary the right to take his British citizenship away?
