You could call it “compulsory citizenship”. Due to a recent change in the law, any Australian who’s eligible for a British passport is required to get one – otherwise, they won’t be allowed to visit the UK.
There are some technicalities and exclusions, but it covers most people with British-born parents. It certainly includes me.
Waving my Australian passport at Heathrow will no longer get me through. So, much to the horror of Jocasta, I am now British to the bootstraps.
I don’t want to be British, but I don’t have a choice. I could renounce my UK citizenship, that’s true, but the cost is nearly $1000. Or I could get a “certificate of entitlement”, placed inside my Australian passport, but that costs even more. So, if I want to visit the UK, the cheapest option is to apply for a UK passport, priced at about $290.
Is Britain now so impoverished it needs to scam the children of its diaspora? It seems so. You are deemed to be “British by descent”, whether you like it or not, and are now required to enter the UK on the “correct” passport.
Paying the money is one thing, but the hassle is worse. After searching various cupboards and drawers, I located birth certificates for myself and my parents, but was then told I had to also send their marriage certificate. The end of their relationship was about as peaceful as the Trojan War, so I was not surprised to find the document missing. I assume it was torn to shreds years ago, by one or other of the crazed litigants.
Is Britain now so impoverished it needs to scam the children of its diaspora? It seems so.
And so I paid yet more money to the chancellor of the exchequer. The British national debt was being reduced by the day. The certificate was finally located – proof of a marriage that occurred in the northern county of Lancashire in 1946. Hurrah! My passport was now approved. It duly arrived. I was suddenly British, even though I didn’t want to be.
Fondling the document, I decided to make the most of it. I recited the first page of my new passport to Jocasta: “The Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State” acting “in the name of His Majesty” was making various demands on my behalf. His majesty required that I should be allowed to “pass freely without let or hinderance” and be afforded “such as assistance and protection as may be necessary.”
This was almost as good as my NSW Seniors Card which describes me, somewhat optimistically, as “a valued member of our community” who should be extended “every courtesy and assistance.” That may be the opinion of Chris Minns, but my new advocate is of superior standing. This was from the King of England. And the King of other places.
“By ‘eck, there’s nowt like royalty,” I said to Jocasta, talking in the working-class Lancastrian accent which, I imagine, my father once used. I showed her the passport. “Old King Charlie has left me reet chuffed. You should bloomin’ treat me with a bit more respect. Mek us a brew, will you, love?”
I searched around for a ferret to shove down my trousers, but found none were available in the Sydney suburb in which I reside.
Jocasta was not impressed by the passport, despite the gold lettering on a blue background, the rampant lion and unicorn and the message from the King and the “Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State”.
Then again, my partner has long suspected me of Britannic tendencies. All I need do is glance idly at a British newspaper, and she says: “You live here, you know? You’re not a Pom. You’re just a normal Australian.” If, on the same evening, I happen to tune in to BritBox – an episode of Morse, perhaps, or a binge on The Great British Bake Off – she looks at me as if I am personally responsible for the British abandonment of Australian troops, first at Gallipoli, then at Singapore.
“I know your type,” she said, glowering at the passport. “You appreciate all the wonders and glories of living in Australia, the prawns and the friendliness, the banh mi and the beaches, the power and horror of our long history, but somewhere, deep inside you, there’s a fantasy that you’re Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited, and you’re noodling around Oxford in your two-seater, open-top car, with your arms around your beloved teddy bear.”
It was some speech, and maybe she was right. I’d rather be in dreamy Oxford than in my father’s grim Lancastrian town. Rather effetely, I placed the passport onto the table. “One doesn’t know what to think,” I said in my newly plummy voice. “One has all sorts of conflicting emotions.”
If I am forced to be English, I may as well be Full English. Much like the breakfast.
I wrapped a scarf around my neck and checked the fridge for quail eggs – which, unaccountably, were absent. Jocasta, meanwhile, was slumped on the kitchen table, having given up all hope. I gently placed my hands on her shoulders. “I say, old stick, you don’t know where a chap could find a teddy bear?”
It’s only fair to give Jocasta the last word. Or words. They were “Oh my God, save me.”
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