When I last wrote in the Financial Times, in February, my wife and I were waiting for our baby to be born, as well as for Egypt’s uprising to deliver. Despite the repression, curfew and other forms of collective punishment, we were hopeful.
While predicting the fall of the last pharaoh, I recognised three main dangers facing Egypt in its labour: the risk of prolonged instability, stemming from a lack of political flexibility either by design or incompetence; a slide to hegemony by the Muslim Brothers, which had, I thought, a better chance of out-manoeuvring other groups; and the legacy of six decades of military-backed authoritarianism. For the moment the first and third predominate, but it is the second that may prove more significant.
