The case surrounding British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has highlighted what a former senior aide to Sir Keir Starmer describes as the ‘bizarre’ priorities within Whitehall.
Paul Ovenden, who stepped down from his role as the Prime Minister’s strategy director in September, revealed that Abd El-Fattah’s situation became a ‘running joke’ among staff at Downing Street.
Ovenden characterized the activist as a ’cause célèbre’ highly favored by Whitehall’s diplomats and their energetic assistants.
He further criticized the efforts to secure Abd El-Fattah’s release, calling it a symbol of the relentless drain on time and energy by individuals preoccupied with niche issues.
After years of imprisonment in Egypt, Abd El-Fattah’s arrival in the UK on Boxing Day was met with approval by Sir Keir.
However, previous social media posts by Abd El-Fattah have emerged, in which he, a dual British citizen, seemingly advocated for violence against Zionists and law enforcement.
Mr Abd El-Fattah this week apologised ‘unequivocally’ for several historic tweets and claimed some of the posts had been ‘completely twisted out of their meaning’.
The PM has since been fighting off calls to deport Mr Abd El-Fattah – who has been branded an ‘extremist’ – and to strip him of his of his British citizenship.
The case of British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah (pictured) has revealed the ‘sheer weirdness’ of Whitehall priorities, a former top aide to Sir Keir Starmer has claimed
Paul Ovenden, who quit as the Prime Minister’s director of strategy in September, said Mr Abd El-Fattah’s case was a ‘running joke’ among Downing Street staff
Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, has ordered a Foreign Office review of ‘serious information failures’ in the case after the emergence of his ‘abhorrent’ posts.
In an article for The Times, Mr Ovenden claimed the case had revealed the ‘true nature’ of Whitehall to British voters.
He wrote: ‘What I knew of his plight during my time in government was largely down to his status as a cause célèbre beloved of Whitehall’s sturdy, clean-shirted diplomats and their scurrying auxiliaries.
‘They mentioned him with such regularity that it became a running joke among my colleagues: a totem of the ceaseless sapping of time and energy by people obsessed with fringe issues.
‘Fattah’s sudden crashing into public consciousness has revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time.’
Mr Ovenden left the Government last year after a series of derogatory sexual remarks he made about senior MP Diane Abbott in 2017 were published.
He claimed Mr Abd El-Fattah’s case had revealed only ‘a tiny part’ of how Whitehall is ‘distracted’ by ‘political folderol’.
In an outburst at what he dubbed the ‘Stakeholder State’, the former No10 adviser decried ‘the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters’.
He said this was to the benefit of ‘groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore’.
‘Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small Government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts,’ he added.
‘The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers.
‘It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.’
Mr Ovenden urged Sir Keir and his Labour Government to show a ‘stiffened spine and renewed purpose’ to ‘dismantle much of the Stakeholder State quickly’.
He suggested the PM should scrap the state pension ‘triple lock’, cut Britain’s ballooning benefits bill, slash red tape, and overhaul the energy sector.
‘We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system,’ Mr Ovenden added.
‘We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy.
‘We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper.
‘On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.’
Mr Abd El-Fattah was detained in Egypt in September 2019, and in December 2021 was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news.
His imprisonment was branded a breach of international law by UN investigators, and he was pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in September after years of lobbying by Conservative and Labour governments.
He flew to the UK on Boxing Day and was reunited with his son, who lives in Brighton, after a travel ban was lifted.
