CITIZENSHIP: FROM RIGHT TO PRIVILEGE violently beaten her at least twice for refusing to go.22 As SIAC said in her case, the law allows the home secretary to revoke citizenship on national security grounds without giving her a chance to show before taking the decision that she does not pose a risk to national security; without requiring the home secretary to show that she does pose such a risk; without allowing her to persuade an independent tribunal that she does not. It concluded, ‘SIAC is not empowered to decide for itself whether she poses a risk to national security.’23 3. A lesser citizenship: embedding discrimination The extension of the logic of deportation to British citizens is racialised. The changes in the law were all made specifically to de-nationalise Muslims: > The 2002 changes were made so that Muslim preacher Abu Hamza could be deported despite being British; > The 2006 changes were made in response to the July 2005 London bombings; > The 2014 changes were made in order to remove the citizenship of Hilal Al-Jedda, after the Supreme Court ruled that he no longer held Iraqi citizenship so could not be deprived of his British citizenship. ‘A privilege not a right’ In December 2013 Theresa May, then home secretary, asserted that ‘British citizenship is a privilege, not a right’, revealing that she had revoked the British citizenship of 20 British jihadists that year.24 The statement, repeated by successive Home Office ministers, is directed at Muslims, not at the British population as a whole, and is understood as such. For ‘native’ British citizens who are sole nationals, the statement is nonsensical: for them, citizenship is an inalienable, irrevocable and unconditional right. It is only a withdrawable ‘privilege’, contingent on good behaviour, for others (British-born, registered or naturalised citizens with another nationality or access to one). This immediately sets up a hierarchy of citizens, as many have pointed out: 22 ‘Victim of brutal domestic abuse loses appeal against deprivation of British citizenship’, Free Movement, 10 March 2022. 23 SIAC, Decision in U3 v SoSHD, 4 March 2022, para 41. 24 ‘Home Office: “British citizenship is a privilege, not a right”,’ ITV, 22 December 2013. In fact the idea was first stated by David Davis in parliament in 2008, and repeated by other ministers: see HC Deb 20 February 2008, col 354; HC Deb 2 June 2009, col 183; HC Deb 14 July 2009, col 223, cited by Raza Husain QC and others in their Joint Opinion on Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill for the Good Law Project (2022) para 47. 10