Practically an Immigrant

As a nominally Christian bedlam with a famously pious warder, it is only natural that the United Kingdom should have no particular interest in the reclamation of sinners. Accordingly, the expressed wish of Shamina Begum, who left the country as a schoolgirl four years ago to join the Fighting Sons of Blair in Syria, has been greeted by the security minister with finger-wagging sanctimony. "Actions have consequences," sermonised Ben Wallace, a colleague of Graybeing the Unsacked, Rudd the Rapidly Returned and Fox the Defence Ministry Werritty-warmer. Doubtless with an equally straight face, Wallace demonstrated the expectable level of compassionate insight into the mind of a groomed fifteen-year-old: "People know what they're getting into;" and then had a bit of a blather about investigations, interviews and prosecutions, probably because the Government has just passed a new anti-terrorist law and is simply itching to take it out for a trial run. For her own part, Begum is in the last stage of her third pregnancy, having lost two other children to disease and starvation, and seems to believe that Britain might have some sort of interest in ensuring that the child, though presumably a citizen of nowhere, is not made to pay for the mother's derelictions. Evidently there has been some small communications breakdown in the Middle Eastern terrorist community when it comes to Britain's recent achievements in detention, deportation and child poverty.