Egypt’s nostalgia for the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak is misplaced, Roula Khalaf writes in The Financial Times. “A charitable revisionist view of Mr Mubarak is emerging. It is true he might not have been the worst among Arab dictators, even if his administration was repressive and corrupt. But some are now fond of pointing out that Mr Mubarak … ‘He allowed the business community and the intelligentsia to have some space,’ says one business person,” Khalaf writes, but Ahdaf Soueif says “it’s hard to see why, if the system had carried on, things would’ve gotten better. It would have gotten worse but at a slower pace.”

Meanwhile, the FT is running a letter to the editor from one Chris Somes-Charlton arguing that Khalaf’s piece from earlier in the week (“Sisi’s Egypt: The march of the security state”) “points up the problems, but pulls its punches.” Somes-Charlton, a translator and business manager for Palestinian singer Reem Kelani, is particularly upset about the role of the military in the economy and the state’s management of water resources.