The El-Fattah story is everything we've come to expect
Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a man who called for the murder of white people, fantasised about raping British women, called Britons “dogs and monkeys”, praised suicide bombings, and openly celebrated anti-Western terror is walking free in the UK with a British passport.
Having been jailed in Egypt, freeing El-Fattah has been the “top priority” of the PM and the Labour party, backed by a cross party petition - despite none of them having the first idea who the man is. The story is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of British politics.
This has caused great anger on on X and has been the main story of the day. I myself am past angry because I don't expect anything different. This is exactly what they did with climate change on the back of a Greta Thunberg speech, and reminiscent of when they granted Gurkhas leave to remain on the back of a Joanna Lumley campaign, and how they rolled over for trans activists. Everything they do is based on empty virtue signalling and narcissism.
The cherry on top this time is that Keir Starmer complained to the Sunak government because Egypt was jailing people for social media posts. That’s gone down like a lead balloon in this house as I’m sure you can imagine. If you post an anti-Hamas meme, North Yorkshire plod will drag you out of your home in the middle of the night, but if you spew a load of extremist Moslem bilge, Starmer will do all he can to free you.
One tweeter remarks “The worst thing about the Alaa Abdel Fattah affair is you just know, because this is England, that he will somehow end up in a council house in Chelsea. A Russel Group university will give him an honorary degree and the King will make him the Poet Laureate”.
It further transpires that this has been in the works for some time and Tory fingerprints are all over this too. Hardly anyone emerges from this with their credibility intact. Especially not Alicia Kearns whose grovelling falls far short of convincing.
Those of us who campaigned for Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s protection and release as a British citizen plainly were not aware of his grotesque tweets, and at no point had anyone raised them with me until yesterday. I trusted the process to give Alaa citizenship, and then supported the campaign for his release. I feel deeply let down, and frankly betrayed, having lent my support to his cause which I now regret.
It is wholly improper for British citizens to be detained without due process by foreign states; however Alaa must unequivocally apologise and make clear he now wholly rejects the hatred and anti-semitism he expressed which is so wholly incompatible with British values.
It betrays a total lack of due diligence and basic curiosity - that our political class is now notorious for. Westminster is largely an oral culture. These people will have been told by a "trusted" person to support this cause. They would never think to check it out. There’s no real admission of culpability either. Just a suggestion that it can be made right by an apology from El-Fattah himself. These people are simply not on this planet. It is unlikely that any apology would be sincere since his family is just as rotten as he is. They clearly do not subscribe to “British values”.
Quite obviously Alaa Abd El-Fattah should be thrown out of the country along with his family. Any functioning country would not have admitted him in the first place, but a halfway functioning country, having made such an error, would already have him on a flight out of the country. But it remains to be seen whether he will be deported. He no doubt has many layers of legal protections and will be granted a Rolls Royce legal team to prevent his removal.
There will also now be many questions asked as to how El-Fattah was ever granted British citizenship in the first place. T’other North as already done the legwork. Fattah became a British citizen in December 2021 under Section 4C British Nationality Act 1981 (as amended). That section was originally conditional on a “good character” requirement but this was removed by Order in 2019 after judgement of the Supreme Court in Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department found that it was incompatible with the ECHR.
The process thus became one of entitlement, with automatic grant if the conditions set out in the Act were satisfied, carried out as an administrative function by Home Office officials. The Home Secretary (Priti Patel at the time) had no power to intervene, or to refuse a valid application. Nor did the application require her approval. The law must be changed - but we know how that goes.
How El Fattah was able to mobilise the entire British establishment is another worthwhile question. As Melissa Chen observes “Many "dissidents" welcomed to the West are actually extremists from their own societies. But like wolves in sheep's clothing, they just invoked the right buzz words like "democracy" and "human rights" and Western institutions, too eager to have a foil against morally inferior (more authoritarian) regimes, just fall for it like suckers”.
Again, though, there's a rush to pin the blame for this latest fiasco on the ECHR, but when you look at all the moving parts, it again points to the narcissism and stupidity of MPs, a dysfunctional and supine parliament, and judges in a world of their own. The rot is at the heart of the British establishment, and we're not going to get anywhere until that fact is recognised.
A more cynical interpretation is that of POSIWID; that if the system is importing terrorist sympathising radical moslems then the system is functioning as intended. That would certainly track given Starmer’s enthusiasm for the system. Once again the interests of the people come last.
One would like to think that this would be a watershed moment for this government. I’m just old enough to remember there was a time in British politics when this would be a resigning matter. But in this post-accountability age, no-one is to blame, nobody will have to resign, no laws will be changed, and nothing will be learned. Just another self-inflicted national humiliation we’re expected to just swallow until the next one. This is the new normal, folks. Suck it up and like it, because you’re stuck with it.