Just hours after Jeremy Corbyn said of ISIS bride Shamima Begum: “Taking somebody’s citizenship away is not the right thing to do. I think she should be brought back,” Guido can reveal the letter from John McDonnell to then Home Secretary Theresa May in July 2014 challenging her to strip any British citizens who served in the Israeli Defence Force of their British citizenship. McDonnell writes:

“Will you be warning any British citizens considering engagement with the IDF that, in line with established British Government practice (e.g. the deprivation of British citizenship from, to date, at least 40 UK passport holders who have been involved in the Syrian civil war), such engagement may put their British citizenship in jeopardy?”

McDonnell states that he wrote the letter in response to this article by Robert Fisk, calling for any Brits who volunteered for the IDF to be questioned by police when they returned from Israel. McDonnell went much further, suggesting that Brits volunteering for the IDF should be classed as “terrorists” as well as being deprived of their citizenship. The hard left just can’t get over their Israel obsession…

Incredibly, the letter was still publicly posted on McDonnell’s website until at least June 2017, almost two years after he became Shadow Chancellor. McDonnell has since deleted the letter, but the internet never forgets…

Corbyn’s position on Begum’s citizenship is deeply unpopular with the public but did at least appear principled – it is looking a lot less principled now that it emerges that his right hand man was in favour of stripping Brits of their citizenship for fighting for the UK’s main ally in the Middle East. McDonnell’s position appears to be that Britons with dual Israeli nationality fighting to defend the Israeli state should be stripped of their nationality yet their Islamic State terrorist enemies in the same position should not…

Read McDonnell’s letter in full below: