When Cameron took the Muslim Brotherhood to lunch
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British Prime Minister David Cameron invited the Muslim Brotherhood’s international spokesman to lunch at Chequers last year in a two-hour seminar in which the Brotherhood presented its vision and the prime minister asked what Britain could do to support it, the Middle East Eye has learned.
Gehad El-Hadad, the international spokesman, was the star attraction of a prime ministerial seminar held on 17 May last year, when the former president Mohamed Morsi was still in power and months before he was due to London on an official visit.
According to a source who was present, Cameron talked of crony capitalism under Hosni Mubarak, and the potential of free markets under Morsi. Cameron questioned El-Hadad on the Brotherhood’s vision and asked what Britain could do to support it.
El-Hadad’s answers were described by those who attended as convincing and were referrred to in Cameron’s own summary at the end of the meeting. The prime ministerial seminar was followed by lunch and a tour of Chequers. Also present was Maajid Nawaz, the co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based think tank which focusses on counter-extremism.
News of his private encounter with the Brotherhood will embarrass the prime minister, who has since ordered a Whitehall investigation into whether an attack on tourists in Egypt was organised by the Brotherhood in Britain. Cameron came under a hail of criticism when it was revealed that he had appointed Sir John Jenkins, the UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia to head the review.