Sometimes you need to say things which you know in your heart of heart are right, but which are profoundly unpopular.

If a cross section of the British population, which was representative, was to watch and listen to what I have to say,

then a very large majority would disagree with me.

But saying the right thing when it's unpopular to do so is exactly the time when you need to say the right thing.

Now, we're talking today about Shemima Begum, who's lost her appeal against the stripping of her British citizenship.

Let's talk about it.

Now, Begum was born in this country in 1999. She is as British as I am.

When she was a 15-year-old girl, she was radicalized and groomed and trafficked, left for ISIS-controlled Syria, the best part of the decade ago, when she was a schoolgirl.

Within days of arriving, she married a Dutch-born ISIS fighter, who's 80 years older than her, we'll talk about that, and gave birth to three children, all of whom died.

Now, in 2019, after the so-called Islamic State had essentially collapsed, she was found in a refugee camp in northern Syria.

And the next day, the Tory government revoked her British citizenship.

Now, the government claimed she had dual Bangladeshi citizenship, but Bangladesh denies this, and was also declared that she entered Bangladesh, she would be executed.

Under international law, it is illegal to deprive some of citizenship, if that leads from stateless.

Also, a violation of British law under the British Nationality Act of 1981.

But let's go on the basis that she has dual citizenship, on the government's claim, they're very strident about it.

What this is saying, what the government is saying, is that for millions of dual nationality Britons, and there are many millions of dual nationality Britons,

your citizenship is conditional in a way it is not for everybody else.

So, your citizenship is a privilege, not a right. My citizenship is just a right, yours is a privilege.

Now, there are serious allegations against Bacon, allegations which deserve to be tested in a court law.

And I'm obviously not asking you to approve of Bacon, I don't, obviously.

I mean, a few years ago, she said she felt nothing when she saw the head of a man who'd been decapitated on the basis that he was an enemy of Islam.

Don't know what her position is now, but obviously these sorts of utterances are rightly very, very disturbing.

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