By working as a Europeanized lawyer, Zaghloul gained both wealth and status in a traditional framework of upward mobility.

He became close to Princess Nazli Fazl, and his contacts with the Egyptian upper class led to his marriage to the daughter of the Egyptian prime minister Mustafa Fahmi Pasha, whose friendship with Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, then the effective British ruler of Egypt, accounts in part for the eventual acceptability of Zaghloul to the British occupation.

In all his ministerial positions, Zaghloul undertook certain measures of reform that were acceptable to both Egyptian nationalists and the British occupation.

Zaghloul became increasingly active in nationalist movements, and in 1919 he led an official Egyptian delegation (or wafd, the name of the political party he would later form) to the Paris Peace Conference demanding that the United Kingdom formally recognize the independence and unity of Egypt and Sudan (which had been united as one country under Muhammad Ali Pasha).

In 1922, he was moved from the Seychelles and was taken to Gibraltar due to ill health arriving there on board HMS Curlew and he was released in 1923.

[5] In order to avoid engendering anti-colonial sentiments, the colonial government imposed edicts which censored letters that exiled individuals sent to their family and compatriots back home.

Yet he also had finally come to power partly because he had compromised with the palace group and implicitly accepted the conditions governing the safeguarding of British interests in Egypt.Following the assassination on 19 November 1924 of Sir Lee Stack, the Sirdar and Governor-General of the Sudan, and subsequent British demands which Zaghloul felt to be unacceptable, Zaghloul resigned.

Yet he returned to active politics two years later and, though he never again held the Prime Ministership, he remained an extremely influential figure until his death in 1927.

— Partakes in the establishment of Hizbu l-Ummah, which was a moderate group in a time when more and more Egyptians claimed to revive their independence from the British.

— November: After that the British commander in chief over the Egyptian army is killed, Zaghloul is forced to leave office.