Efforts to free Alaa Abd el-Fattah regularly distracted Keir Starmer’s government from focusing on bread-and-butter domestic political issues, according to one of the prime minister’s closest former advisers.
Paul Ovenden, who stood down last year as the prime minister’s director of strategy, said the case of the British political prisoner became a “running joke” among those in government frustrated by the slow pace of change.
Abd el-Fattah’s case has dominated headl
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