PETER HITCHENS: Shamima Begum is being punished without a trial… All I see is a nasty mob justice

You may think I am pretty bad now, but you should have seen me when I was 15. I said, did and thought terrible things, which are now hateful to me. The memory of them is pretty much unbearable. I can still shudder at the remembrance of them. But there it is, nasty actions once done cannot be undone, cruel words cannot be cancelled.

Perhaps everyone else is so much better than this, and so pure in heart, that they do not think there is something a bit merciless about the British State’s vindictive treatment of Shamima Begum. I agree with everyone else, especially my colleague Sue Reid, that her behaviour was idiotic and that she said and did things which she will be ashamed of until the end of her life.

Meanwhile I would think that the deaths of her three infant children, something none of us would wish on anyone, should be punishment enough for anybody.

I don’t like the look or sound of her. I suspect her basic problem is that she is not very bright. I hope never to meet her. But if anyone has any evidence that she committed a crime, then let them accuse her of it in a court of law, before an impartial jury. And if she is then found guilty I will cheerfully support the punishment she is awarded according to law.

But this cannot happen, as long as she is condemned to spend the rest of her life in some Syrian slum. This is thanks to a cancellation of her citizenship, which reminds me of the thuggish old Soviet Union at its worst, a despotic Third World measure which this ancient civilisation should be ashamed of wielding.

Perhaps everyone else is so much better than this, and so pure in heart, that they do not think there is something a bit merciless about the British State’s vindictive treatment of Shamima Begum (pictured) 

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If anyone has any evidence that she committed a crime, then let them accuse her of it in a court of law, before an impartial jury, says PETER HITCHENS

She has, as is all too common these days, been punished without trial. Maybe Sajid Javid, the politician who first condemned Begum to lifelong exile, has a totally clear conscience about his youth, which he is said to have spent reading the Financial Times and watching Grange Hill on the TV. Maybe he cannot conceive that the lives of any of his children or grandchildren might go so wrong, as life went wrong for ‘Jihadi Jack’ Letts, another of these idiots.

And maybe the members of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission have likewise lived lives of blameless sweetness from their infancy upwards.

We must, it seems to me, have some really pure and wonderful people doing these jobs. The same, no doubt, goes for all the politicians and journalists who have applauded the decision to confirm the revocation of Begum’s citizenship.

I would think that the deaths of her three infant children, something none of us would wish on anyone, should be punishment enough for anybody 

But all I see is a nasty sort of mob justice. The British Government claims to be so very tough on terror but, in fact, is pretty useless at preventing it, and helped support an Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, in a cynical operation in Syria.

They claim to be keeping us safe from Begum, who cannot come here again. And yet, if she somehow managed to get on one of those dinghies from France, she could walk ashore on a Kentish beach one afternoon and vanish into our unpoliced cities, along with the thousands of others doing this without hindrance from this supposedly tough government.

This is fake severity, a hunk of meat flung to the angry crowd by a scared and weak state.

And it is also merciless, the lifelong relentless punishment of a lonely, bereaved woman. Is this a thing to be proud of?

Those who have done it should remember the ancient, simple biblical advice to us all: ‘What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God,’ and ask if they are obeying it.

Welcome to the Republic of Transgendria 

Good heavens! Children’s books are being censored to make them more politically correct! Astonishing! A politician is in trouble because she openly avows the Christian faith and says she means it. Where have you all been these past 20 years? All these things have been happening for more than 20 years.

Try to find a modern children’s book which contains a family with two heterosexual parents. Expressions of conservative Christian belief, especially about marriage, have been virtually forbidden in the public sector for ages, and the police have long had a habit of taking stern action against conservative street preachers.

Look, the revolution has happened. For most people, this is normal life. If it hasn’t reached you yet, it soon will. Visit my home town, Oxford, this week and you will see, over almost every college in the vast University, the flag of the Republic of Transgendria flying. The new elite, who will march into the political parties, civil service, BBC, the police, law courts and schools in the next few years, all know they must salute this flag if they hope to be employed or promoted. Do wake up, dears. It has happened, and protests against it are tolerated because they make no difference.

Strolling along the banks of the Thames the other day, I came across a notice containing the warning ‘Caution! Loud Bang!’ There was in fact no bang to be heard. Close by, a sunken vessel of some kind wallowed in the river, rotting gently. Given the current state of our defences, I wondered if I had stumbled on the Royal Navy’s latest fleet exercises. 

It’s not enough just to get the clothes right 

Can the tiresome rewriters of the recent past leave nothing alone? We cannot see it as it was but must we have our opinions guided by characters who have time-travelled from 2023 to show us how horrible we all used to be.

the new series about the Brink’s-Mat gold theft, The Gold, features a militant feminist detective (played by Charlotte Spencer, right) in Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad in the 1980s

In this case, the new series about the Brink’s-Mat gold theft, The Gold, features a militant feminist detective (played by Charlotte Spencer) in Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad in the 1980s. We also glimpse several ‘strong women’ who are the wives of gangsters, a favourite Left-wing fantasy.

Senior police officers meanwhile muse about the desirability of locking up people with posh accents, and one criminal is given lines suggesting he is a revolutionary hero, pitted against England’s traditional rulers.

Sooner or later, to enable this stuff to survive, the facts about life as it was actually lived in those times will have to be suppressed.