What does it mean to be British? That question is increasingly at the heart of our national political debate. And it has become a more urgent one this week as the Conservatives and Reform UK call for the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah to be stripped of his UK citizenship over racist and offensive tweets he published 10 to 15 years ago.
Abd el-Fattah’s social media activity was thrust into the spotlight after he was finally allowed to arrive in the UK last week after a decade spent as a political prisoner in Egypt. The tweets unearthed were vile: they included calls to “kill all Zionists” and to burn down Downing Street during the 2011 riots. Abd el-Fattah has apologised for those remarks.
