As Farouk was extremely popular with the Egyptian people, it was decided by the Prime Minister, Ali Maher, that Farouk should not return to Britain as that would be unpopular, though one of the regents, Prince Mohammad Ali, had wanted Farouk to keep trying to be admitted on a full-time basis to the Royal Military Academy as a means of getting him out of the country. Since under Egyptian law women could not inherit the throne, Farouk's cousin Prince Mohammad Ali was next in line to the throne. Prince Mohammad Ali was to spend the next 16 years scheming to depose Farouk so he could become king. Egypt was in the process of negotiating a treaty that would reduce some of the British privileges in Egypt and make the country more independent in exchange for keeping Egypt in the British sphere of influence. The ambitions of Benito Mussolini to dominate the Mediterranean led the Wafd—traditionally the anti-British party—to want to keep the British presence in Egypt, at least as long as Mussolini kept calling the Mediterranean "Mare Nostrum". For both the Wafd and the British, it was convenient to keep Farouk in Egypt so that when he signed the new Anglo-Egyptian treaty, it would not be seen as under duress as it would be if Farouk was living in Britain. Sir Miles Lampson believed he together with assorted other British officials like the king's tutor, Edward Ford, could mould Farouk into an Anglophile. Lampson's plans were derailed when it emerged that Farouk was more interested in duck-hunting than Ford's lectures and that the king had "bragged" he would "have the hell" with the British, saying they had humiliated him for long enough.