The baby, born of course to a British mother, has no idea what it is doing in a refugee camp in Syria, and if it could talk, would probably be quite saddened at its minimal life expectancy should it stay where it is.
Its mother, Shamima Begum, was 15 when she left the UK to join ISIS in Syria, having been groomed online. As 15-year-old children are well-known to be mature and rational, it is understandable that she should be vilified for her poor life choices.
A far harder intellectual challenge is whether her day-old baby should share in the condemnation of its hapless mother.
It seemed briefly that popular opinion might swing behind the fact that the baby has very little responsibility for its situation, and that being British, entirely innocent of anything at all and a day-old-baby, perhaps we could allow it to live.
The argument that the baby would probably be OK if we just ignored it has been weakened by the fact that its two siblings did indeed both perish, leaving the odds for this one at best rubbish.
“I don’t care about all that,” insisted an arsehole spokesperson. “I believe that I’m a nice person, but to be honest I’ve just been whipped up too much into a ball of xenophobic fury by the Daily Mail that I’ve got to the point where I don’t care if a baby dies.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
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