Sir Keir Starmer and officials were at the centre of a blame game in Westminster over how the Prime Minister ended up saying he was “delighted” to welcome a British-Egyptian activist to the UK who had called for Zionists and police to be killed.
But politicians from all parties, including Nigel Farage’s Reform, were also criticised as Downing Street defended Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s entry to the UK.
The activist, who was recently released after years of detention in Egypt, previously wrote tweets which appeared to show him calling for violence against Zionists and the police, and saying he “hates” white people. He has now apologised for the posts and claimed his past comments had been “twisted out of meaning”.
The Conservatives and Reform have both suggested he should have his British citizenship stripped for the remarks. It is understood there are no current plans for this as the law reserves deprivation of citizenship for the most serious criminals such as terrorists, and there does not appear to be grounds to deport him.
Fattah was granted citizenship in 2021 under the past Conservative government led by Boris Johnson and was not subject to a good character test after it was scrapped following a Supreme Court ruling. It is understood that the Government effectively cannot stop people with a British parent obtaining citizenship due to the 1983 Nationality Act.
Johnson along with his successors Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak vocally campaigned for his release from detention in Egypt, before the cause was picked up by the Labour Government.
Starmer was facing criticism for saying last week that he was “delighted” the activist had returned to the UK, sparking a furious blame game in Westminster.
No 10 believes there are questions to be answered over how successive governments had failed to spot Fattah’s highly controversial past comments, The i Paper understands.
The Foreign Office is now carrying out a review, which suggests that senior politicians believe there may have been failings by officials in the department to spot his previous remarks or alert ministers to them.
Speaking to The i Paper, senior Labour MPs placed the blame on officials but also Starmer’s political advisers and the Prime Minister himself
One said the case was “another sign that the people and machine around the PM, both political and civil servants, aren’t doing their job”, adding: “There is no way the PM should have been put in the position by the Foreign Office.”
But another senior Labour MP said that Starmer should have seen this “a mile off” and made a “mistake”, which he should admit: “The Government could easily have just left this to officials. PM should intervene only when citizens share our values otherwise just normal consular assistance should apply.
“As a politician it’s ultimately you who is responsible for the words you use”.
I’m delighted that Alaa Abd El-Fattah is back in the UK and has been reunited with his loved ones, who must be feeling profound relief.I want to pay tribute to Alaa’s family, and to all those that have worked and campaigned for this moment.Alaa's case has been a top priority…
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) December 26, 2025A third senior Labour figure meanwhile suggested the row would be “corrosive” to the relationship between ministers and civil servants.
Lord Mann of Holbeck Moor, a former government adviser on anti-Semitism, said “every party in Westminster” had MPs backing Fattah’s release, “led by David Jones”, the former Tory who was “now of Reform”.
“To manage to unite [Sinn Fein MP] John Finucane and [Democratic Unionist Party] Sammy Wilson takes some doing,” Mann said, referencing a letter signed by 48 UK Parliamentarians in January last year which called for Starmer to put pressure on the Egyptian government to release Fattah.
Mann continued: “At its heart is a cavalier attitude to human rights, reeking of moral superiority and centred on an extraordinary Foreign Office-led campaign over many years.”
He added to calls to strip the activist of his British citizenship: “His citizenship should now be reevaluated in the light of information clearly not considered before.”
Labour MP Peter Prinsley, who is Jewish, said “it was right to bring him to the UK and for him to be released”.
But he added: “His social media posts are awful and the fact that they were long ago doesn’t lessen that.
“If he has broken UK hate speech laws then he should be prosecuted in this country.
“Calls to ‘revoke citizenship and deport’ are simply political posturing with no basis in law.”
Emily Thornberry, Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “For those of us who campaigned for his release, it is extremely disappointing to see these tweets and they cannot be condoned in any way.
“That doesn’t mean, however, that it would be right to take away his nationality and send him back to Egypt, where we can see that in a period of 10 years he spent most of the time in jail just for campaigning for human rights and democracy.”
Fattah was imprisoned in Egypt on charges of spreading false news, in a process branded a breach of international law by UN investigators.
He was pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in September following years of lobbying by Conservative and Labour governments, and flew to the UK on Boxing Day.
Since then, the Twitter posts dating back to 2010 have surfaced.
In his statement, Fattah said: “I unequivocally apologise.
“( s) were mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises (the wars on Iraq, on Lebanon and Gaza), and the rise of police brutality against Egyptian youth.
“I particularly regret some that were written as part of online insult battles with the total disregard for how they read to other people. I should have known better.”
Downing Street appeared content with Fattah’s apology, and the Prime Minister’s official spokesman described it as “fairly fulsome”.
He continued: “That’s clearly the right thing to do.”
The spokesman said welcoming the return of a British citizen unfairly detained abroad was “central to Britain’s commitment to religious and political freedom”.
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“That said, it doesn’t change the fact that we have condemned the nature of these historic tweets, and we consider them to be abhorrent, and we’ve been very clear about that,” he added.
But Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp labelled his statement an “insincere apology”, as he called for Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to strip Fattah, who he described as a “scumbag”, of his citizenship.
Reform , which also called for Fattah’s deportation, criticised the Conservatives for not having scrutinised his past social media more when they started diplomatic efforts to bring him to the UK.
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