Also posted on The Coalition of the Brave.
During my travels around the web I discovered yet another reminder of what modern-day Tories stand for. They stand for the steady erasure of rights and democracy.
From the excellent post by Dr Nafeez Ahmed:
- Nationality and Borders Bill: Up to 15 Million at Risk
As has been widely recognised in the British press, the Nationality and Borders Bill would provide the Home Secretary unprecedented powers to deprive British citizens of their citizenship without telling them.
The bill extends the Government’s already existing power to strip dual nationals and naturalised British citizens if the Government believes that doing so is “conducive to the public good”. As long as the Government can also claim to have “reasonable grounds to believe” that the individual in question is eligible for foreign citizenship (so that, at least ‘in theory’ the Government could claim they would not be made stateless), their status as British citizens can be unilaterally eliminated.
The problem with this law is that it removes democratic checks and balances on how this extraordinary power is exercised.
This is but one part of an eight-point-prong that Dr Ahmed so concisely demonstrates is bad for Britons. I’m not going to quote the entire article (that would be disrespectful to Dr Ahmed, whose post deserves reading on their site), but I will quote a particularly salient point:
Rather than seeking some specific end-goal of overturning democracy entirely, this new legislative architecture would culminate in a form of elective dictatorship or authoritarian democracy that would not only allow a racialised state-corporate executive to operate without accountability to voters or the rule of law, but make theoretically possible the execution of political violence against minorities and dissidents on an unprecedented scale.
Not only will minority citizenship be conditional on behaviour deemed by the state to be ‘good’; the state and the private interests with which it is entwined will have newfound powers to limit and control politics, education, media, culture, and health – while being capable of deploying covert political violence to silence dissent.
If these bills come to pass – and one of them already has – they will fundamentally undermine the most crucial foundations of a free society, even if their full implications may not become visible immediately, or even under this Government.
However, the point of democracy is that checks and balances work to protect the rights of all. The Conservative Party is trying to create an ethno-nationalist system of governance in which the rights of minorities, opposition and dissidents are systematically diminished. This is the real danger of Boris Johnson’s rule – but it is a dark legacy that will outlast him, and that the current political crisis serves, conveniently, to distract from.
I’m of the view that the illegal partying that’s taken place under Boris Johnson’s watch deserves condemnation and investigation, but Dr Ahmed is right – there are other forces at work, and other, more serious dangers from a prime minister and government that seem to believe their rule should be unopposed. Add this to the folly of writing billions of pounds of covid fraud whilst raising the pressure on families with NI increases and rising energy costs, and being unable to fund school meals for kids whilst seeking to invest in nuclear weapons, and you have a government that’s beyond hopeless, and utterly cruel.
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