Editorials

Tulip Siddiq has now resigned as Economic Secretary to the Treasury, effectively number three to Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. She had referred herself to the independent parliamentary standards adviser and his report finally tipped her over the edge. But the whole seedy affair says a lot about the type of MPs there are in the Commons, allegedly as ‘Labour’ MPs.

It was not that Tulip Siddiq did anything illegal. What is so astonishing is the manner in which a ‘Labour’ minister – moreover the one with an ‘anti-corruption’ brief – found herself embroiled in the charges of corruption that have been levied against her aunt, the former Bangladeshi Prime Minister and the latter’s close allies in the Awami League.

Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was Awami League leader and Prime Minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001, and again from January 2009 to August 2024, in other words for over twenty years. Her most recent term in office was characterised by rampant corruption and economic crisis.

Towards the end of her premiership there were widespread protests by students and youth, which were brutally suppressed, and hundreds were killed by paramilitary forces. Eventually, however, the protests led to Sheikh Hasina being forced from office and fleeing to India.

“about $150bn smuggled out of Bangladesh”

The new government of Bangladesh has started a corruption investigation into the Awami League, its leaders and those in the business community associated with the party. The inquiries focus around government contracts and monies allegedly siphoned off. According to some press reports in Bangladesh, “about $ 150 billion was smuggled out of the country”.

This is where it begins to involve Tulip Siddiq, Sheikh Hasina’s neice, because she has been named in at least two of the corruption inquiries. Bobby Hajjaj, a leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Democratic Movement, has made allegations of corruption around the construction of a nuclear power plant, for example, suggesting that billions of dollars were distributed to members of Hasina’s family.

“A significant portion of this money has ended up in the UK,” Hajjaj told the Financial Times last month, so not surprisingly the investigators have asked for access to Tulip Siddiq’s bank records over the past years.

It transpires that in 2004, Tulip Siddiq was ‘gifted’ a two-bedroom flat in London, which she still owns, and which is worth nearly two thirds of a million pounds. It was supposedly bought for her by a property developer close to the Awami League. This is a property in which Siddiq has occationally lived in herself from time to time, as have members of her wider family.

It is in relation to this property and the swirl of press attention around the revelation, that Siddiq referred herself to the parliamentary standards adviser. In his report this week, the adviser, Laurie Magnus, reported that Tulip Siddiq “had not broken the Ministerial Code”. However, in typical parliamentary langauge, he expressed misgivings. “I have not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort” he said, “in relation to all the UK property related matters.

Siddiq “unaware” of the origins of her ownership…of a £650,000 flat

The most astonishing statement from Magnus, according to the BBC report, was that Siddiq was “unaware of the origins of her ownership of her flat in Kings Cross, despite having signed a Land Registry transfer form, relating to the gift at the time“. He writes that the former treasury minister “remained under the impression that her parents had given the flat to her, having purchased it from the previous owner“.

This is an astounding admission. Imagine owning a flat, worth around £650,000 today, and not being sure how she came to own it! It is a jaw-dropping statement. For the big majority of workers – and we would include middle-class, professional and well-paid workers (we are talking here about 98% of the UK population) – it is a situation that would simply never happen to them. It is questionable whether Siddiq is fit to be a Labour MP at all, let alone a minister in a Labour government.

We know that there are Labour MPs on the left of the party who are not in politics for their own personal enrichment and we applaud them for that. But it also seems that there are far too many Labour MPs who are simply on a gravy train, pursuing a personal career, often with lifestyles far removed from from those of the big majority of the population.

Half of London residents are either struggling to pay mortgages or making great sacrifices to deal with rising rents. Homelessness in London is at an all-time high. Yet here we have a ‘Labour’ minister with a flat, claiming to be “unaware” of how she came to own it.

Siddiq has resigned as a minister, but she remains an MP. We will see in time if she becomes further embroiled in the corruption inquiries reaching across from Bangladesh. But her resignation has without doubt further undermined Keir Starmer’s position in the minds of voters in general and Labour supporters in particular.

Up to the last, Starmer gave Siddiq his full support

The positioning of Siddiq as “anti-corruption” minister and her subsequent resignation reflect poorly on Keir Starmer himself. Starmer and Siddiq were close personally and politically. They entered politics at the same time, in 2015, and represent neighbouring constituencies. Up to the publication of the report of the standards adviser, Starmer was still giving Siddiq his “full support”.

There are two things we can take away from this tawdry affair. The first is that it is another nail in Starmer’s coffin. Having himself been gifted clothes and spectacles worth tens of thousands from wealthy supporters, having overseen cuts in payments to pensioners, and a continued squeeze on welfare benefits, he has suffered a plunge in his popularity at a rate faster than for any Prime Minister in modern history.

Yet the worst is yet to come, because the capitalist class, particularly the financial sector, are  hitting back at the relatively meagre increase in taxes in the form of higher employers’ National Insurance. The bond markets are pushing rates on government loans to their highest levels for sixteen years.

There is now a concerted campaign in the media and in business and financial circles to push Rachel Reeves into introducing new cuts in government spending: tighter austerity, in other words. Alongside this there is pressure on the Labour leadership to kick the New Deal for Workers, promised to the trade unions for the first “hundred days”, into the long grass.

When Labour loses scores of seats in local elections next May, as seems likely, and when trade union conferences begin to express their outrage at the trajectory of this government – then Starmer’s support in the wider labour and trade union movement will begin to shrivel and voices of opposition will increase.

Open selection could have been in the Labour constitution in 2018

But the second take-away from the Siddiq affair is that a fight for proper Labour representation in parliament is far from over. One of the most serious mistakes made by Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader, was at the 2018 Labour conference, when he stymied a rule change that would have put Open Selection in the party constitution, when it would have been easily passed by conference. Open Selection is an idea that will not go away and it will come back to haunt all the carpet-baggers, careerists and phoneys who masquerade as ‘Labour’ MPs in parliament today.

But that is not all. The left support Open Selection, but they should also fight for candidates who will stand on the platform of “a workers’ MP on a worker’s wage”. The best guarantee there can be that Labour MPs really understand the day to day problems of working people is to have them live the same lifestyle and feel the same economic pressures.

For all she understands about the insecurities and uncertainties of working class households, Tulip Siddiq might as well live on another planet. The same goes for too many other ‘Labour’ MPs, living a life far above ordinary voters. The sooner they are deselected the better.

[feature picture of Tulip Siddiq from UK government website, here]