#4 What Tweets? I Know Nothing!

After a blissfully short but thoroughly indulgent few days with family and friends over Christmas, during which I heroically ignored all news, I foolishly decided to peek at what’s been happening in dear old Blighty while I’d been busy marinating myself in bourbon and comfort food.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. The instant I went online and clicked on one of the many news-outlet links littering my browser, I could practically hear my blood pressure screaming for help. It swear it shot up to “consult your GP immediately” levels (I have tablets and a home BP monitor, everyone calm down).

Story after story seemed absolutely determined to push me over the edge and straight into a frothing, apoplectic rage. Case in point: Nigel Farage’s school reports, apparently rediscovered after decades in some mythical filing cabinet, along with a sudden flood of former classmates who have, quite miraculously, developed pitch-perfect recall of things allegedly said in a playground 49 years ago. To anyone with even a modicum of common sense can see it’s nothing more than tittle tattle generated by a scared Government and equally scared media.

I mean, honestly, can any of you reading this remember what someone said to you nearly five decades ago? Because I can barely remember what I had for breakfast. Yet here we are, treating half-remembered playground bollocks from the 1970s like it’s sworn testimony at The Hague.

And if that wasn’t enough to finish me off, there’s this weaselly government quietly shuffling the inheritance-tax threshold on family farms from £1.5m to £2.5m, clearly hoping no one would notice and accuse them of yet another shameless policy U-turn. Because why would anyone clock a “tiny” change involving millions of quid, people’s livelihoods, and a complete reversal of what they said last week?

Honestly. The sheer fucking audacity.

No, what has really got me frothing and swearing at the computer screen, and is the subject of this week’s rant, is the welcoming back to these shores of a man, one Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a known Islamic extremist who was convicted and jailed in Egypt for hate speech and incitement to kill, and who is on record time and time again as describing himself as a “racist white hater” and a man who has repeatedly chanted death to all Zionists (Jew’s in other words) and say’s that killing one is “heroic”, said all police should be killed and is an outspoken Holocaust denier.

Apparently, obtaining his release from said Egyptian jail has been one of Starmer’s top priorities. Now, you may be thinking to yourself well this man surely must be British born and have a right to come here, that’s why Starmer and others on the left and right want him ‘home’. Well no, he was born Egyptian, worked in Egypt all his life and is an Egyptian anti-government activist. He was only granted British citizenship in 2022 because his mother was born here!

Now I’d like nothing more than to put all the blame for this monumental cock up squarely at the feet of Starmer & Co but alas, no, it was Priti Patel who grated him his citizenship in 2022 while he was still in jail in Egypt. The fact that at the time it was widely circulated to those in the know that this was merely a ruse by which this scumbag could then demand a blue passport.

Here’s just a snippet of what this odious little shit has said in the past.

In July 2010 he wrote: “I consider killing any colonialists and specially Zionists heroic, we need to kill more of them.”

In September 2010: “There was no genocide against Jews by the nazis after all many Jews are left:”

In November 2010: “Dear Zionists please don’t ever talk to me, I’m a violent person who advocated the killing of all Zionists including civilians, so fuck of.”

In December 2010: “I’m proud of being racist against whites”.

In April 2011: “I hate white people.”

In August 2011: “Now my real criticism of these post police murder riots is the wrong focus, go burn the city or downing street or hunt police u fools.”

In May 2012: “If we can’t kill the officers anyway ... fine. We’ll find a terrorist cell to kill their children and torture their mothers. Peaceful is stupid.” 

There are many more examples of this man’s ideological thinking. Scary shit indeed!

So now that all of the above about this man has finally bubbled to the surface, we’re told, straight-faced, that Starmer, Lammy and the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, were completely unaware of his “abhorrent” views. Which is impressive, really, given that said views weren’t exactly hidden under a rock. One almost admires the commitment to collective amnesia. I prefer to call it what it is, collective bullshit.

But the real star of this farce is the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell—the very man who personally helped secure the lifting of this individual’s travel ban from Egypt. For him to claim ignorance of the man’s background isn’t just unconvincing; it’s genuinely laugh out loud funny. National Security Adviser, allegedly. One assumes Google was down that week.

In any case, it’s all a bit academic now. This odious specimen is already here, having touched down on Friday evening, so the chances of this Government suddenly discovering both the ability and the will to do anything about it are hovering somewhere around zero. Short of revoking his citizenship, their hands are apparently tied, tragic stuff.

Although, that said, if Shamima Begum, a naive teenager who ran off to join a terrorist organisation in 2019, can have her citizenship stripped permanently, I struggle to see why this walking national embarrassment shouldn’t have his torn up, set on fire, and swept into the nearest bin. Consistency, after all, is such a charming thing in government.

I’ll leave the last words to Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary who wrote these last couple of lines in a letter to Starmer (I can’t bring myself to use his full title)

“Nobody should be imprisoned arbitrarily, nor for peaceful decent. But neither should the Prime Minister place the authority of his office behind someone whose own words cross into the language of racism and bloodshed”

The Unvarnished Truths