Politics: out of their depth

By Richard North - December 29, 2025

The Alaa Abdel Fattah story has moved on at lighting speed, so much so that MPs from both sides of the House are now calling for the Egyptian “dissident” to be stripped of his British citizenship.

Through yesterday, though, there was a rumbustious discussion as to who was responsible for this debacle in the first place, as it is now established that Fattah became a British citizen in December 2021 under the Johnson administration, when Priti Patel was home secretary.

Labour MPs and sympathisers are arguing that the fault lies with the Conservatives as both Johnson, Liz Truss as foreign secretary and then Rishi Sunak had lobbied for Fattah’s release and he had been granted citizenship under the Tories in the first place,.

The legalities behind his grant are somewhat complicated but it is not necessary to know the detail – although the bones of the story are set out here.

For the moment, it suffices to say that Fattah benefitted from Section 4C British Nationality Act 1981 (as amended), which provides for a route to citizenship for certain individuals born before 1983, whose mothers were British citizens.

Fattah actually qualified for this route, although the route is so complex that someone in the know must have advised his sisters and mother, who applied on his behalf.

The section as originally drafted did not confer automatic citizenship as this was conditional on a “good character” requirement. This requirement, though,. 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 – one of the very last acts of the May government.

As a result, the citizenship process thus became one of entitlement, with automatic grant as long as the conditions set out in the Act were satisfied. Approval was an administrative function carried out by Home Office officials. The Home Secretary had no power to intervene, or to refuse a valid application. Nor did the application require her approval.

On the face of it, therefore, once the application had been made, there was nothing Priti Patel could have done, within the framework of the Act, to stop Fattah becoming a citizen. But in this instance, there was a mechanism which could have stopped the process in its tracks.

This was because, normally, citizenship takes effect only after attendance of a ceremony at which an oath of allegiance is made, and the certificate of citizenship is issued. This is usually a compulsory requirement, and citizenship only takes effect from that date.

In the case of Fattah, however, since he was incarcerated in an Egyptian prison, this could not apply. But, in accordance with Section 42 of Act, the Secretary of State has the legal authority to disapply or modify the requirement for a ceremony, oath, or pledge in the “special circumstances of a particular case”.

In standard practice, this authority is often delegated to Senior Caseworkers or specialized teams like the Citizenship Ceremonies Support Team (CCST) within the Home Office but in this case it is possible that there was direct intervention by home secretary Priti Patel, which might have been at the urging of the Foreign Office.

It is possible, therefore, that Patel’s approval allowed the registration to be finalised in absentia, a move considered by the Egyptian government as part of a broader “ruse” coordinated by then prime minister Boris Johnson administration to demand his release as a British citizen.

The involvement of Patel, though, is speculative. Home Office guidance notes that Section 42 decisions can escalate to the minister for high-profile or sensitive cases, and Fattah’s prominence as an “activist” (with family ties to UK academics) might qualify – but no leaked memos or official admissions confirm it.

Any such intervention would align with broader UK-Egypt relations under the Conservatives, where citizenship grants occasionally served diplomatic ends (e.g., pressuring for releases).

If she were still a minister, Priti Patel might be facing some stiff questioning in the House, but even if she is in the clear, the Conservatives cannot walk away from this debacle with clean hands. Subsequent to Johnson’s endeavours, we know that Sunak took a personal interest, so this case has Tory fingerprints all over it.

Despite that, though, there is no dispute that when Labour took over last year, Starmer was already committed to Fattah’s release. Ironically, on 9 November 2022, while he was still leader of the opposition, he raised the case in the House with then prime minister Rishi Sunak, noting that he was “a British citizen jailed for the crime of posting on social media”, who had been imprisoned in Egypt “for most of the last nine years”.

This was the man who, as prime minister, was to preside over the jailing of over a hundred native Britons for “hurtful” or inflammatory social media posts yet, by his own admission was totally unaware of the “abhorrent” social media posts published by the man he supports.

Evidently aware of the furore he has caused, Fattah has released a statement apologising for his social media posts, but claiming that some had had their meaning “twisted”.

“Looking back”, he says, “I see the writings of a much younger person, deeply enmeshed in antagonistic online cultures” – like he was 31 at the time. And he is unaware perhaps that no absolution was given to the likes of Lucy Connolly for any extenuating circumstances.

As much to the point, before the Left rushes to forgive their man, they might recall that Farage is being held to account for things he supposedly said as a schoolboy.

As Pete remarks on his Substack blog, though, hardly anyone emerges from this with their credibility intact, particularly some of the many MPs who supported Fattah. One such example is Alicia Kearns, former chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, whose attempt at self-exculpation falls far short of convincing.

Claiming that she had been unaware of Fattah’s “grotesque tweets”, and that “at no point had anyone raised them with me until yesterday”, she bleats that she “trusted the process to give Alaa citizenship and then supported the campaign for his release”. Now, she says she feels “deeply let down, and frankly betrayed, having lent my support to his cause which I now regret”.

This betrays a startling lack of due diligence and even of basic curiosity – reaffirming our experience that, the higher up the information tree these people go, the less they seem to know.

In my time working with MPs I had first-hand experience of this dynamic. Westminster is largely an oral culture. MPs absorb information mainly by talking to “trusted” aides and colleagues, and the likes of Kearns would have been advised verbally to support Fattah.

She would never have thought to check the case for herself. MPs very rarely do. They don’t work like ordinary mortals. Very often, they will believe the last person they spoke to, or the one with the highest “prestige”.

I found this when advising MPs. I would work carefully on a well-researched brief, making sure all my facts were checked and sourced, only to be overruled because my man had been told something by a prestigious figure.

I often had this with Eurosceptics. I would work out a position on something, only to be outranked by an ERG “guru” who would come out with the most unbelievable tosh, only for it to be swallowed whole, just because he said it.

Now, it is transparently obvious that we have a political class that is totally out of its depth. Despite being awash with information, they opt for virtue signalling in place of rational analysis and, in this case, they have come a cropper.

This is a story nowhere near its end yet, but there may be an even further irony waiting in the wings if the government bites the bullet and seeks to deport Fattah. An unconfirmed report suggests that Egyptian government is considering removing the citizenship of Alaa Abdul Fattah. They don’t want him back.