Foreign Office under pressure over British-Egyptian activist’s ‘abhorrent’ social media posts

Open Editor’s Digest for free

Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Ministers should have been aware of the inflammatory tweets posted by British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah before he arrived in Britain last week, according to the former head of the British Foreign Office.

Lord Peter Ricketts said in hindsight ministers should have told officials about Abdel Fattah’s historic comments on social media before welcoming him to Britain with open arms, a move that sparked a fierce political row.

Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday that he was “delighted” that the activist had come to Britain, only to later discover the tweets posted by Abdel Fattah, which the Prime Minister described on Monday as “absolutely abhorrent”.

Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, ordered a formal inquiry into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office into the “serious information failures” revealed by the case.

Ricketts, a former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said on Tuesday that while the ministry had to deal with many consular cases, the investigation should demonstrate that those involving direct ministerial interventions should be handled differently.

He told the BBC: “When officials will ask ministers to lobby for dual citizenship, there will likely be background checks and due diligence to try to avoid some of the problems that have emerged in the last few days.”

Cooper told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in a letter this week that former foreign ministers and prime ministers had made public statements about the Abdel Fattah case “without any relevant information.”

The UK’s Conservative and Reform Party called for Abdel Fattah’s citizenship to be revoked and for him to be deported, after the revelation of a 2012 tweet that appeared to call for the killing of “Zionists.” He had appeared separately calling for the killing of police in 2011. He “unequivocally” apologized for the tweets.

Starmer apologized to Britain’s Jewish community for initially enthusiastically embracing Abdel Fattah’s return, but Downing Street insisted the activist was welcome in the UK.

No 10 said on Monday: “We welcome the return of a British national wrongfully detained abroad, as we have done in all cases and as we have done in the past.”

Earlier this year, Egypt pardoned Abdel Fattah, seen as the country’s most prominent political prisoner, after he was imprisoned for his opposition to tyranny.

The blogger and software developer has spent most of the past 11 years in prison, with a six-month break in 2019, during which he still had to sleep every night at the police station.

The row comes at a sensitive time for Starmer’s Labor government, which is facing pressure from the right over immigration, with Reform UK calling for mass deportations of people deemed to be living in the country illegally.

A new poll has shown a change in attitudes about what makes someone ‘British’, with an increasing number of people (36%) saying a person must be born in the UK to be truly British, up from 19% in 2023.

The YouGov Institute for Public policy Research poll showed that a majority still believe being British is rooted in shared values, but a growing number said it was more about race, place of birth and ancestry.

The poll showed that 37 per cent of Reform voters said they would be prouder of their country if there were fewer people from ethnic minority backgrounds living in Britain in 10 years.