Ministers cannot go on ignoring the Shamima Begum case, for two important reasons | Shamima Begum

While many aspects of political polling in the UK have changed greatly since 2019, the public’s opinion of Shamima Begum has remained largely constant: a large majority do not want the now 26-year-old to return to the UK.

In 2019, the then home secretary Sajid Javid stripped the UK citizenship of the Londoner, who as a schoolgirl had traveled with two friends to the area controlled by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, on the grounds that she posed a security threat. In that case, 76 percent of people supported the movement.

Fast forward to November 2025 and an equivalent survey has been found Two thirds of people think Begum should not be allowed back to UK.

So from a policy perspective, responding to the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights should be a simple task for the Home Office. Media briefings this week suggested Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood would “strongly” oppose the tribunal after she questioned whether the UK should consider whether Begum, who left the country at 15, had been trafficked before being left stateless in a Syrian camp.

However, this is not an issue that ministers can easily ignore, particularly for two reasons.

The first is that Begum is not alone. in November, anti-terrorism report The government’s refusal to repatriate most of the dozens of Britons still living in camps housing former ISIS members and their families has become “untenable”, a panel of senior British lawyers has said.

The report stated that 55 to 72 people with connections to England, including approximately 30 to 40 children, stayed in the camps and lived in “inhumane” and often dangerous conditions, and stated that other countries had already taken action on this issue.

The second reason is that the human rights court may be right (despite everything Mahmood might deny).

The UK has never sought to hold Begum to account, even though 15-year-old Begum is claimed to be old enough to understand the consequences of her quest for a self-styled global caliphate that carries out numerous and brutal human rights violations.

Nor did he seek to take responsibility for the actions of someone who was entirely a product of his own country when he left the UK.

Begum’s case also highlights another political dilemma that is not currently high on voters’ lists of concerns but has potentially huge repercussions: What does this mean for the rights of Britons with immigrant heritage?

Ministers said the only reason Begum could be stripped of her UK citizenship was because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents. However, Bangladesh rejected this. Citizenship cannot be revoked if it leaves someone stateless, meaning Begum’s fate would be impossible for an equivalent Briton with no overseas background.

The bar for losing UK citizenship is quite high. This can only happen if citizenship was acquired fraudulently or if the removal of citizenship is in the “public interest”. Home Office guidance states that this means that the affected person is linked to serious organized crime, terrorism or war crimes.

For these reasons, the Home Office concluded that it could not revoke the citizenship of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who was granted status while in prison in Egypt in 2021 because his mother was born in the United Kingdom. He arrived in the UK on Boxing Day, despite posts emerging on social media in which he talked about the need to kill “colonialists” and “Zionists”.

However, both Conservatives and Reform UK advocated for Abdel Fattah to be deported and lose his UK citizenship; This suggested that a future government could use enforcement more broadly against dual citizens or people with immigrant backgrounds, even if they did not necessarily violate the law.

The dispute is linked to wider debates over immigration, where Keir Starmer’s government is accused of trying too hard to appease voters enticed by Reform at the expense of losing potential voters on the other side of the political divide to the Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said it was possible for ministers to have a wider debate about the importance of citizenship as a right if they wanted to tackle the issue directly.

“If the government wants to reverse the Shamima Begum case, it should do so on the following grounds: [British] citizenship is not a safe situation for him; “This is not a safe situation for anyone,” he said. “Would you like it if Nigel Farage revoked your citizenship because Israel gave you citizenship or because you have Irish grandparents?”

“Citizenship is an unlimited, irrevocable, irrevocable right and status, otherwise it is nothing, this is how you defend it.”

But Ford added that although this was a reasonable general argument, Begum’s example was unlikely to be the best way to proceed with this.

“I say this as someone who thinks the government made a big mistake by not taking principled positions. [by] “I follow the elections a lot, but even keeping that in mind, the Shamima Begum case is a difficult one,” he said.

“This is never going to be a popular thing because even though it’s possible to frame the issue as human trafficking, that would mean someone leaving the country and joining ISIS, and that’s never going to be a popular cause.”