TXSL #2: Christmastime with Abd el-Fattah and Farage: a time for forgiving and for forgetting?

I was going to start this opinion column writing project with a whimsical critique of LinkedIn posts written in the ‘broetry’ style. But that will have to wait – I’ve been surprised by how quickly the news cycle moves, and this topic is already going out of date, having been overtaken this weekend by news about US military intervention in Venezuela. (A week really is a long time in politics!)

Anyway, let’s start with a question: does someone who did or said awful things a long time ago deserve a second chance?

In the general case I think most people would say yes. People are usually forgiving (though there are social and cultural differences in the distribution of the tendency to forgive), and not just at Christmas time, as the lyrics of ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ by Cliff Richard remind us. Of course a lot depends on the details of the questionable behaviour. But, we would reasonably expect an offender to use the standard ‘HR playbook’, including an apology for past behaviour, acknowledgement of the hurt to victims, and a commitment to not repeating the offending behaviour in the future. (This isn’t difficult – it’s probably bread and butter work in HR departments all over the world.)

Now let’s see how this applies to two current controversies with surprising parallels: the offensive historical social media posts from around 2010 by the recently released British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah, and the alleged racist and antisemitic bullying carried out by Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK and potentially the most likely candidate for Prime Minister in 2029, when he was a teenage student at Dulwich College in the 1970s.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah served two five-year prison sentences as a prisoner of conscience in Egypt. He was released from prison and returned to the UK in December 2025. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has since faced criticism for allowing Abd el-Fattah to return to the UK, having continued the policy of working towards Abd el-Fattah’s release that was begun by ministers under the previous Conservative government. This criticism has focused in particular on Abd el-Fattah’s history of extremist social media posts, some of which would be illegal under UK law, for example, including calls for violence against Zionists and police officers.

Since the posts came to light, Abd el-Fattah has:

Apologised unreservedly for the offence caused.
Acknowledged their extreme nature, and their impact, while offering some mitigating factors and context for some of the statements he made (I leave the reader to decide for themselves how much this counts for).
Strived to show that he no longer stands by the extreme sentiments he expressed in the past.
Emphasised his work as a pro-democracy activist in Egypt and his support for constitutional protections for minorities.

But despite his following the HR apology playbook, it feels like some critics of Abd el-Fattah from the right of the political spectrum are falling over themselves in their frenzied rush to have him stripped of his British citizenship and deported to Egypt.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has faced months of headlines about alleged bullying incidents dating back almost 50 years. His victims have alleged that he targeted them in acts of racist and antisemitic bullying that left lasting consequences, incidents which would today be treated as hate crimes or hate incidents were it not for the age and the high school context of those involved (I researched the police response to hate crime in September 2022 after a racist incident that I reported to the Met police, something I’ve written about previously on Medium).

Since those incidents came to light, Farage has:

Denied entirely that they happened, thereby accusing some 28 or so of his contemporaries who testified about them of being liars.
Downplayed the seriousness and the nature of the incidents as mere ‘playground arguments or banter’, and denied any intention to ‘directly’ hurt anyone or offend ‘with malice’.
Situated the alleged behaviour in the cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s to make it seem more acceptable for the time (which I leave the reader to evaluate for themselves).
Threatened to stop speaking to the BBC after losing his temper when interviewed about the allegations, thereby threatening the vital role of the free press in holding public figures to account.

It seems clear to me that one of these men is somewhat more deserving of forgiveness and a second chance than the other. And I suspect much of the general public feels the same way: Farage’s scarcely believable denial of all these corroborating accounts may contribute to limiting Reform UK’s appeal to the electorate. Whoever’s advising Nigel Farage on his PR strategy probably needs to go back to the basics on this one. (Unless they’re saving up a future public apology to deploy later on? If so, you heard it here first!)

Maybe it’s time that political parties had their own HR departments?

TXSL #2: Christmastime with Abd el-Fattah and Farage: a time for forgiving and for forgetting?

Further reading

Leave a Reply Cancel reply