Javid shows sound judgment in revoking Begum’s citizenship

Therefore it would have been no surprise if the government had bowed to those who saw the Jihadi Shamima Begum as a victim.

Plenty of voices in Britain have been calling not only for her return to the UK to be facilitated but for her to be given help and support. Had she been allowed back, in no time that is what she would have received.

Soon enough, her victim status would have been further burnished, with a claim that she need this training or that allowance. Any security force surveillance of her would not only have been costly, it would soon have been deemed ‘oppressive’.

Ms Begum’s defenders say that she was brainwashed in Syria but that cannot explain her decision to travel there, long after the depravity of Islamic State had been beamed around the world in reports of numerous atrocities.

Ms Begum is entirely the author of her own misfortune.

It is true that she was only 15 when she left Britain. But how many teenagers of that age are unable to identify as wrong a fanatical cult that beheads people?

In her case, seeing severed heads in bins in Syria “didn’t faze her”. Now she has even justified the bomb outrage by an Islamic fanatic at a concert in Manchester in which 22 people at a concert were slaughtered, many of them children.

Ms Begum sought jihad, something that most people would realise to be wrong far younger than 15, but, worse, has utterly failed to reflect on the consequences of her actions.

She is lucky to be alive after volunteering to help Isis.

It is a sign of the sound judgement of the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, that he has revoked Ms Begum’s citizenship.

Anything else would have been a signal to other young people who are devoid of moral compass that they can go off and join mass murdering gangs and then return feeling sorry for themselves if the mass murderers are defeated in war.