a populist play for favourable tabloid headlines.

It was by then home secretary Sajid Javid, with a bully’s swagger, on the day the second of two fateful interviews with Shamima was conducted, and her status as the woman the Daily Mail comments section loves to hate was confirmed.

Media interviews with this terrified, brainwashed teenager are the closest thing to a “trial” she has ever been granted.

She was convicted in the court of public opinion, and sentenced by politicians to exile without charge or trial.

Whatever our own personal opinions may be about Begum, this treatment must surely be unacceptable in a country that believes in the rule of law.

If there is evidence that she has committed crimes, then it is perfectly possible for her to be tried in a British court.

Former director of public prosecutions Lord Ken MacDonald has stated that “hundreds and hundreds of terrorist prosecutions” have passed successfully through British courts in recent years.

The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, has urged the UK to repatriate its nationals and put them on trial, where appropriate.

The previous UK government’s policy has demonstrably failed.

All of our main security allies are repatriating their nationals – and growing ever more frustrated with Britain’s failure to do so.

In May, the US repatriated 11 of its citizens, and facilitated the return home of Canadian, Dutch, and Finnish nationals in the same operation.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has stated, not for the first time, that “the only durable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in the displaced persons camps and detention facilities in northeast Syria is for countries to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate, and where appropriate, ensure accountability for wrongdoing.

” The new Labour government should take this advice on board, reject the Conservative government’s cruel, politically motivated policy, and look again at Begum and other Britons imprisoned in north-east Syria.

Abandoning them merely erodes our moral decency, and makes all of us less safe.