Are you comfortable letting the government shred your citizenship?

Under changes made when Theresa May was Home Secretary, anyone who is eligible to claim citizenship outside of the UK can have their British passport shredded by the government, a decision most famously used to keep Shamima Begum in a refugee camp and not in the UK to face the music. At least some notice was required then, with the possibility of appeal. The new law will allow the Home Secretary to remove citizenship unilaterally, without notice.

As with the vast majority of anti-terror legislation that comes in the form of a Chinese water torture pattern of drips and drabs, it’s easy to think this latest measure irrelevant. And in reality, that will be the case for 99.99% of the UK. After all, the Home Office has only used its powers to strip around 150 people of their passports in the last 10 years.

While it’s very unlikely to affect me, something about this bill doesn’t sit quite right. I was born British, I’ve lived here most of my life and my actions should be no-one else’s problems other than the British government.

As the son of an Israeli, I happen to also hold a second blue passport. Had I not opted in when I was a child, I’d have the right to claim one, simply by having two Jewish grandparents. As a member of a diaspora that for hundreds of years has been shuffled around Europe and pogrommed across huge swathes of the continent, the idea that my place in the country I was born in could be arbitrarily removed doesn’t fill me with a huge amount of confidence.

Maybe before this is enacted, British Jews should think about whether it’s the sort of law they’re comfortable with.