Who Stays, Who Goes?

Jim Chimirie

January 2, 2026

There's a line every serious country holds: the right to decide who may enter, who may stay, and who must never return. It's the first function of sovereignty. Without it, a nation is theatre. A flag stapled to a bureaucratic husk.

The Shamima Begum case is the moment that truth steps into daylight. Because if Britain cannot bar someone who joined a death cult that beheaded its citizens and tried to exterminate whole peoples, then Britain no longer governs Britain. Shamima Begum didn't slip into something murky or ambiguous. She didn't stumble into the wrong youth club. She flew to Syria to join the Islamic State; a regime of rape, crucifixion and industrial-scale slavery.

She stood under the black flag. She married into the cause. She lived in the heart of an organisation that made a religion of brutality. That is not a misstep. That is allegiance.

And allegiance cuts both ways.

Yet Strasbourg has now demanded Britain justify its decision to strip her citizenship. European judges want to know whether we broke her "human rights" – whether refusal to let her back into the country she walked out on is a form of "punishment."

The implication is clear: Britain may not have the final word on who belongs in Britain. A foreign bench will decide instead. It's a national humiliation: a sovereign state being asked to answer for the crime of protecting itself, being told to treat a volunteer for a genocidal terror group as a potential victim of trafficking, a wronged schoolgirl to be ushered home and rehabilitated.

The narrative has been flipped: the perpetrator as victim; the country as suspect; the public as the problem. We're lectured that she was "groomed." That she was "trafficked." That she didn't know what she was doing. It's the same script we hear every time a Western-born radical turns on the country that raised them.

Infantilise the perpetrator, pathologise the hatred, and if all else fails, blame Britain for not embracing them hard enough. It's a story written to absolve everyone except the people who actually need absolution. And through it all, the British state hides behind the convention.

Ministers talk tough, then whisper "it's unlawful." Not unlawful because Parliament said so, but unlawful because Strasbourg might. That's where the rot lies. The ECHR was written for the ruins of 1945. It was never meant to be a veto on democratic self-defence in a world of mass migration, stateless terror armies and globalised jihad. It was a shield. Now it's an obstacle.

A serious country would walk away the moment a treaty made protecting its citizens "incompatible." It would say: join a terrorist organisation and you sever the bond. You forfeit the passport. You forfeit the right to return. You made a choice. The nation makes one too. Not out of spite but out of the only principle that keeps countries alive: mutual obligation. Break it, and the contract ends. Instead we get obedience.

Obedience to foreign judges. Obedience to NGOs who treat borders like a moral failing. Obedience to politicians who pray to international law like a religion because it spares them the burden of taking responsibility.

They think compliance is virtue. In truth it is surrender in slow motion. The Begum case isn't about her. It's a stress-test of the country's spine. Does Britain have the moral courage to defend itself, or will it be shamed into submission by a court that never has to live with the fallout of its rulings? Will we accept that sovereignty is conditional – a privilege on loan from Strasbourg?

Or will we remember that a nation that can't say no has already ceased to exist?

© Jim Chimirie, 2026

Image via Author

Jim has captured the mood of the UK (or at least most of it) with his commentary although there is one small point - the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has not made a decision, a ruling or come anywhere near doing so.

Begum's lawyers have seen all appeals to UK courts turned down. The next step for them is an approach to the court, the ECtHR, so they have done.

The ECtHR has now asked the UK Government for its side of the story. No hearing has been scheduled and its most likely to be years before one is.

The pile-on from MSM is entirely predictable, as is the same on social media, all yelling about 'ECHR interference' or words to that effect.

Its also quite remarkable that almost everybody (with the exception it seems of myself and KJM Today) confuse the treaty itself, the ECHR which is just that, a treaty; a convention, with the court that oversees it, the ECtHR, which is where the decisions are made after hearing both sides.

Don't be fooled by the hype from MSM, social media posts or from politicians - especially from politicians.

Kevan James

What’s your view?

Scroll down and leave a Comment using the comments form below

and have your say.

User names are fine.

Or

Use the Get in Touch form at the very bottom of the Home Page

and write a letter for our Reader’s Remarks Page.

You will need to include your name, address and contact details.

Only your name, city/town and county/country will be published

and we can withhold these if you ask.