222. Tulip Siddiq

0:02This is a global production. I delayed my birth by a day to vote against Brexit because I'm a staunch Remainer. And you went in to vote in a wheelchair, didn't you? Because you were overdue or on your due date. And I remember you were wheelchaired through the Commons to vote. That's right. Are we going to see a great resurgence, a resurrection of Tulip Siddiq's Labour career? Who knows? I mean, if you have any contacts with Andy, ask him. But basically, at the end of the day, I know this sounds like a politician's answer, but it really is the truth. The Labour Party is bigger than one person. If you are Labour, and if you cut my veins, Rachel...

0:43Leads red, eh? It does. It does lead red, I'm afraid. I am Labour through and through. You are not moving me away from the party. Is it true that as a child, you met Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, and Mother Teresa, and you went to the White House? That's all true. So you're a kind of nepo political baby. Hey, that's a bit rich coming from you, I think. I've never gone into politics.

1:20Tulip Sadiq, this is such a cliche, has politics in her blood and her bones. It's really the family business. Yes. Her aunt and grandfather have both led Bangladesh. They are both sheiks, sheiks, sheiks. Sheiks. Sheik. So Tulip has been the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate. She took over from Glenda to Jackson. It was previously Hampstead and Kilburn since 2015. Labour's victory in 2024 saw her promoted to government as economic secretary to the Treasury and also city minister. She was responsible for the UK's financial services sector. sector. But she resigned under her own volition last January during a complicated anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh that involved her own aunt, a property empire, probably much more.

2:09So Miss Sadiq is not unacquainted with scandal, with witch hunts, with allegations of corruption, the whole shebang of politics right up to assassinations because your grandfather and other family members tulip were murdered in a military coup before you were born so my goodness what a tale you have to tell welcome to difficult women thank you thanks for having me shall we dispose of the controversy section of your wikipedia entry first sure let's just get the whole bangladesh corruptions aren't resignation out of the way tell difficult women listeners exactly what happened and why you felt you had to resign.

2:55Thanks, Rachel. Thanks very much for having me. So as you mentioned, I've been the MP for 11 years, taking over from the formidable Glenda Jackson in Hampstead. And before that, I was a Labour councillor in Camden. But I actually joined the party when I was 18. So believe it or not, for 25 years, I've been a member of the Labour Party and involved in politics. So it's nothing new to me. I am used to this. So I joined and my aunt, as you say, was the former prime minister of Bangladesh. And so was my grandfather, even though I never met him as he was assassinated before I was born. And what happened is when my aunt's government fell effectively, it was geopolitics.

3:36And I was essentially collateral damage in a big political game. So I think the details can be quite confusing to people who aren't fully in it. But it's a bit like, and forgive me for using a very current example, you know how Nigel Farage is talking about two fingers up to the establishment and it's a game, isn't it? Effectively, it's a political game. What the interim Bangladesh government, so this was the previous Bangladesh government who took over for a while after my aunt's government fell. they were unelected and the man leading it was also unelected they essentially started this huge witch hunt in which I was collateral damage and it was to discredit my aunt discredit the work she had done but I actually had very little to do with me it was more about getting back on my aunt but I was a very useful pawn for a start because I was a British MP but also the newspapers in Britain really enjoyed the stories that Bangladesh were coming out with because they were so salacious and absurd.

4:42But you asked me about the scandal. I still don't know what I've done wrong, because they've never contacted me, the Bangladesh authorities, ever since they started spreading all these allegations. It's been two years now, Rachel, they have never contacted me. not for want of trying but hold on can i just read this bit and you can tell me if this is fake news on the 13th of april 2025 i.e two months after you resigned um three months bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for you as part of investigations into corruption during your aunt sheikh hasina's reign centered around claims that your family embezzled nearly four billion from the country's infrastructure projects.

5:36On the 1st of December that year, you were convicted in absentia and sentenced, I'm laughing, to two years imprisonment and a fine. It makes Nigel Farage's five million look like chicken feed. Well, exactly. So this is what we should discuss because the things Bangladesh accused me of, and again, Rachel, the only reason I know this is because I read it in the papers. They've never contacted me. The things they accused me of were outrageous. So I embezzled four or five billion dollars. It wasn't million like Nigel Farage. It's a billion. I mean, it was a gift. I just haven't. I've never seen that money.

6:14So if you find it, can you let me know? Because then I could live in luxury for the rest of my life. As could you, because I could give you some. I've never seen that money. I was then accused of negotiating a power plant nuclear deal with Vladimir Putin. I was accused of training secret forces in Bangladesh. I was also implicated in a case from 1973, bearing in mind I was born in 1982. Yes. Yeah. So there were these cases. OK, so it's all jumped up, trumped up. Well, I've just, it's all I've read in the papers. So once I started reading these in the papers, and I will address this question about the arrest warrant, I hired a British law firm to write to the Bangladesh authorities to put this to bed, to be like, what are you accusing me of?

7:02Because as far as I'm concerned, I live in North London with my husband. I take the Northern line to work every day, as I have been doing for the last 11 years. I went to university here. I went to school here. I worked at Oasis, the clothes shop when I was at university. You know, I just, if I had those billions, I just, I was worked as a caseworker in Leighton and Wanstead. I worked for the Labour Party. I worked for Tessa Jowell. I mean, I worked at Brunswick. Do you really do those jobs if you've got those millions of dollars stored up? But so I hired a law firm. They wrote eight letters to the Bangladesh authorities asking to see the charges against me and to see the evidence.

7:41They didn't reply to those letters, but they acknowledged the letters in the press. So the Bangladesh authorities would say, we have received a letter. We will not be replying. They would say that. much to my dismay I couldn't get an answer after hiring Stevenson Harwood which was a law firm in the UK in London I then hired at great cost to me a lawyer in Bangladesh because I was like okay let me try and send a lawyer to the Bangladesh courts to find out what I've been accused of and these cases implicating me from 1973 and blah blah blah my lawyer went to court they didn't let him pass the door.

8:19And then the next day, they sent two thugs to his daughter's house to threaten him and say, stay away from trying to represent Tulip Sadiq. That's what they said to him. And then in despair, I was like, I need to find out these accusations against me. I asked Emily Thornberry, who's the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, to find out for me. So she called in the then Bangladesh ambassador, the person here, the High Commissioner in London, and said, in Parliament, could you show me the evidence of what Julep has done? Because Emily has personally known me for about 20 years, since I was an intern in the Labour Party.

8:58And she said, we'd like to see the evidence. Guess what, Rachel? There isn't any. No, they didn't send anything to Emily Thornberry. So when you talk about an arrest warrant, or if when you talk about convictions, I don't know if these things are real or not, because I feel like I'm in some sort of spy novel or a kafkaist nightmare where there's all these accusations you read that paragraph out but do you have you ever seen any evidence because i never have but it all sounds very very far-fetched in 2024 you were named in an investigation into infrastructure projects including a 2013 deal with russia for a nuclear power plant in which it was claimed again billions were embezzled and you attended the nuclear deal signing at the Kremlin apparently it's rubbish is it so I went to Russia to see my aunt I went to Russia what was she doing in Russia so she had a visit but I went on a personal visit to see her because Russia is quite close to London and I hadn't seen her she's my mum's only living relative and this was your aunt who's a former sheikh of Bangladesh the former leader that's right so it's very interesting that you mentioned this because I think, again, I want to mention the first thing that I was talking to you about, this shift in geopolitics.

10:15I think there are foreign states who are targeting politicians in our country. And that is what happened to me. Like there was a foreign state. And I think we will see more of this is kind of what I'm saying to you. And when all of this came out, the Russian ambassador actually issued a statement saying, we will come after anyone who accuses us of corruption because it's also their power plant deal that was being implicated. And it became this huge thing where people were talking about me who I had never met and I never knew about. And it's this shifting of politics that we need to be very careful, I think, of hostile states, of foreign states.

10:56Who was the hostile state targeting you in this case? It was the previous government of Bangladesh. And you were not present at the signing in the Kremlin? Basically, I was at the... This is a bit complicated because I was there to see my aunt, but I wasn't present when she negotiated some deal with them. So you're on a personal visit, a family visit, and you had nothing to do with the power plant. No, of course not. I mean, can you imagine someone in their 20s, some British citizen, like, involved in the... I think we've had enough. The only other controversy on the wiki page is that you were rude to a pregnant producer at Channel 4, but frankly, I don't blame you because they tried to bring all this up.

11:35And I think maybe with more kind of attitude than I have. Is that what happened? I think it was just all a bit bizarre because that incident that you referred to is when we were... Just explain what happened. Yeah, we were trying to free Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe. Okay, this everybody, she was imprisoned by the Iranian regime in 2016, in 2022 with the help of, among others, you, her MP, Tulip Sadiq. She was released in 2020 to great rejoicing. And of course, I should say, you know, my brother Boris was partly responsible, I think, for her incarceration for so many years. And it was a deeply regrettable incident for which I apologise to all concerned.

12:19We can't help who we're related to. That's all I can say. Look, so Nazanin was my constituent, lived down the road from me at the time, had a young daughter. and Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, came to me for help. And we did a big event in my constituency with Emma Thompson, the Emma Thompson, who is a local resident actually in West Hamster. So she's one of your constituents too. She is and has always supported me in every election because remember I've done four elections in ten years because of all the staff elections. Hopefully there won't be another one soon. Well, we may have another one if Andy's feeling confident.

12:59But anyway, carry on. So we did an event with Emma Thompson and Fortune Green in my constituency. And it was a big event to try and get the media to realize that Nazneen was being held in Iran on trumped up charges. We wanted her back with her daughter. And then all of a sudden, these journalists came to me and started talking about Bangladesh. And that was not the time for it, I'm afraid. Like, you want to question me about Bangladesh, we can do it another time. We cannot do it in the middle of trying to release a woman who was at the time starving herself on a hunger strike. So you can imagine why I was not in the best frame of mind.

13:37And also you didn't want it to be about you. Absolutely not. And these trumped up charges against you. I mean, you must have felt a huge bond in a way with your constituent Nazanin. Because you know what it's like when lies are told. Yeah, absolutely. And it's this whole briefing against women. And then again, I come back to hostile states and I come back to being a pawn between two states because what happened is the reason Nazanin was held in prison is because of a debt that we as a country owned. Yeah, to Iran. And we hadn't paid it. And you helped them. You got the British government to pay it.

14:19We badgered them until they paid it, which was great. And, you know, I pay a lot of credit to Liz Truss here. She's actually the one who signed it off in the end. We dealt with five foreign secretaries and Liz Truss was the last one. Jeremy Hunt also did a lot of work on it. But this was a real example of cross-party working because we wouldn't have been able to bring her home if Liz Truss hadn't paid the money. No, and I think that is one of the things she can chalk up as a win during her Lettuce Leaf premiership. And I think you didn't you go to the airport with her to greet Nazanin? I didn't go to the airport, but when she came back to the constituency, I was one of the first to greet her.

14:56And she, Nazleen said straight away that she owed a lot to Liz Truss, which I think is fair. That's good for her. Well, we should celebrate it when people have actually done something. So, I mean, if Liz Truss was a man, she'd never stop talking about it, right? Don't you think? One has to almost feel sorry for Liz Truss at this point. But yeah, it's good that we can celebrate her successes.

15:23A bit about your parents, where they met, how you came to this country. You've got a British passport. You were born in Sutton. You were educated here. You had a kind of colorful education because it was partly in Scholastica and Dakar as well. So I need you to kind of give me your family background in a nutshell. I'll try and do it very quickly. So my mother, when her parents were assassinated, couldn't go back to Bangladesh. The only reason she survived and her sister survived is because they were in Germany on holiday and they found out that the entire family had been killed. My mum applied to be a political asylum seeker in London and the government at the time really helped her.

16:03She came here. She actually settled in the constituency I now represent in Westminster. My father was already in London doing a PhD and this is where they met in London. This is the 70s. They got married. they had us and my siblings in South London I was born in St Helia's Hospital in London in Sutton in Sutton and then it when we were a bit older my father got a job in Brunei teaching because my father's a professor and we went away for a couple of years but my father had a major stroke in Brunei because of medical negligence and that is actually the reason I joined the Labour Party because the NHS helped him back on his feet.

16:43But he was in Brunei and he came back here for treatment. Yes so the major medical negligence that happened in Brunei where they did the wrong treatment on him left him paralysed for life and unable to talk so it was a really big deal when I was nine years old. Is that locked in syndrome or is it something else? It's not locked in syndrome. No it's basically they thought he had tuberculosis but he actually We had meningitis and they did the wrong treatment. I mean, I'm talking about the 90s healthcare in Brunei. So you can imagine maybe not so sophisticated. Either way, what then happened is we went through a couple of years where we went to Singapore for treatment for my father.

17:21We came back to London, which is where our base was. We were all British. NHS helped him. But then eventually my father decided to relocate to Bangladesh because of family help. And I think for lots of reasons, he decided that's when I went and lived with him for two years. But then back to London again. So London's always been my base to Hampstead. And then I've been there since I was a teenager, raised in an amazing area where the Jewish community really supported us and had our backs. And you must have been one of the few or only Muslim families with any public profile in that part of London.

18:00What was that like? Do you know what? It was amazing because I grew up in a house where we celebrated Christmas and Eid. And then we did Friday night dinners with our neighbours, Mrs. Harari, whose son I still occasionally see around when he needs some help with casework. And we were just in we were citizens of the world, I think is the best way I can describe it. But I loved it and I loved growing up there. And sometimes I speak to people and they're like, what was it like growing up in Hampstead? And I said, well, I went to Limud with all my friends. You probably don't know what Limoda is, Rachel, but it's a Jewish conference that happens every year.

18:37And it's amazing. It's more fun than Labour Party conference. That's not saying a lot. But I go there. I went there. Clearly, I'm not Jewish. And I was very welcome. And I had a great time. So I then decided to put my daughter in a Jewish nursery for a while because, well, you know, I'm from North London. I just feel like I wanted her to know how amazing the culture is. And that's the community I represent. And they're the people who've had my back. So why not? I think that's wonderful and very heartwarming. And I don't like the word multiculturalism, but it does strike me that that childhood that you are describing shows that it can work.

19:16Yeah. And it's not working right now. No, I think it had a lot to do with the fact that people were always so open to the cultural norms that I had observed, but also that my mum was also very open to us taking in the best of other people's cultures. I think that mattered a lot. But also, you know, recently with all the stuff we discussed at the beginning about Bangladesh coming after me, the Jewish community really had my back when it comes to all the accusations. They've said very clearly they don't believe any of this and that I am their MP, have been their MP for so long. And that's all that matters.

19:53So I'm very, very pleased to hear that. Do you put your success to the fact that you're very open facing and you embraced Britishness? I mean, you also integrated. You didn't, you know, whether that was with the Jewish community, whether that was with your English schools, whether that was at your university. you you know you didn't you weren't an ideological muslim or in the way that we have seen you know the gaza independents take those issues as their primary focus rather than their local issues it's palestine rather than potholes i think you've taken completely the opposite tack in your career and in your mindset am i right for a start um i think i'm more cultural than religious that's probably the first thing to say culturally most of them yeah yeah i think that's right that's the first thing to say the second is i am married to a man called christian yes exactly i was going to come to that christian louis singen was percy or something what's what are his full names so christian williams singen percy yeah i mean you i mean it sounds like a made-up name go on it really does we met on a blind date as well so oh i'm looking okay everyone we're going have to make sure to you don't I remember to ask you about it so yeah you're culturally Muslim but you're not I'm not politically Muslim but I think for me it came down to when you represent a constituency like Hampstead and Highgate and Hampstead and Kilburn at the beginning so we've got a sizable Somali community they're not as big as probably the Jewish community I have but I've got them and I get on very well with them and I represent their interests and then I've got Hampstead, which has a bigger Jewish community.

21:43And then we've got a Christian community as well. We don't really have much of a Hindu and Sikh community, a smaller one, smaller one. But it has everyone in our constituency. They will come to me, Rachel, mostly with things. When you listen to them, it's all the same issues. So it'll be housing a lot of the times. So it's overcrowding. It's about renters and their rights and evictions and things like that. Then a lot of it is about getting their children into the right schools and then a huge amount on crime because there's been a lot of phone theft and burglies and break-ins will be a lot vandalism you know there's been a lot of that so come to me about that foreign affairs does come up as you say but it's never been the main thing people have come to me and i know that might seem surprising because you will read a lot about gaza and the middle east it's actually not the main thing people will come to me people will come to me the number one thing people come to me is their housing and now it doesn't really matter if you're Jewish or Muslim or Christian or whatever.

22:42If you're going to live in Camden, you need to have your housing sorted. And I think that's kind of how I'm known as a constituency MP is I will champion the thing that's important to my constituents. I personally think that's how most people should be. That's how most MPs should be. No, it doesn't surprise me that when they come to you in surgeries, it's about something nitty gritty as housing. I want to talk about how you got into politics. Is it true that as a child, you met Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, and Mother Teresa, and you went to the White House? That's all true. So you're a kind of nepo political baby.

23:20Hey, that's a bit rich coming from you. I think that's fair. I think, look, you grew up in a political household. I had lots of opportunities. I'm not blind to the fact that I was allowed to experience things that most people don't. But on the other hand, I also had a lot of difficulty by not having an able-bodied father. And that happened when I was very young. So I was nine years old. My mum had just had a baby. So that's my much younger sibling. And my mother was in hospital day in, day out. And I had to look to my baby sister. And that has a huge impact on your life. And you can imagine as a child, you saw your father, he was a keen tennis player.

24:07He used to come to my shows when I played piano or whatever I did, you know, he would be first in the audience. And then one day, literally, he went into hospital because he had a very bad cold and fever. And then he came out not speaking, no use of his right hand or his right leg. And that has a devastating impact on someone's life. But saying all that, it also makes you very resilient. And you may have noticed I'm quite tough when it comes to it. I don't know if that's being a middle child with my siblings, because if you meet them, you'll understand, you know, there's a lot of teasing in our house.

24:40or it was just seeing my father in that way and having to take more of a grown up role from the age of nine in my family that made a huge difference and I think that's helped me whether this recent storm of all the all these allegations and the media glare I think it's really helped me be quite resilient. Did you communicate with him again? I mean with my father yes how did you manage that? So we had a wonderful speech therapist who I still remember called Alison who taught us how to communicate initially by blinking and gestures and writing. We managed to find a way to communicate. Then he had years of speech therapy and he started to speak again, but not fully, if that makes sense.

25:20No, we can communicate. And they're both still alive, your parents? They are alive and they're still badgering me to do a PhD, which you would think, you know, being elected four times, being city minister at one point would satisfy your Asian parents. But clearly, until you've got a PhD, yeah, you're not good enough in the Sadiq household. Were they sad when you had to resign from Kirstama's government or you decided to because of the kind of, you know, you didn't want it to be you to become this distraction? And then the whole story around your aunt and Bangladesh and blah, blah, blah. Were they sad about that?

25:55Were you sad about that? I was really sad. And the reason I was sad is because I loved that role and I was good at it. And I think that's like the city is an amazing place. And remember, I was city minister for a short while, but I was the shadow city minister for a long time in opposition. And Rachel Reeves and I, we wrote the financial services review, which was the blueprint for the city in opposition. And when I got in, one of the things that people talked about a lot was the Mansion House speech, which happens, which I wrote as well for Rachel Reeves. And that was kind of trying to bring the city on side because traditionally, well, they had fallen out of love with the Labour Party a little bit, as you can imagine, during the Jeremy Corbyn era.

26:41So winning them back, showing them that we were on their side. There's a lot of work that went into it in opposition. So I had done a lot of that work. I had formed those relationships, made those networks, and I was really looking forward to like promoting the economy, if you like. So it was really sad resigning. The reason I resigned, even though I should say there was a thorough investigation done into my financial affairs by the prime minister's ethics advisor, who said absolutely with certainty that I hadn't broken any rules. There was nothing financially improper about my finances or my husband's.

27:17I still felt I had to resign because I really was becoming a distraction for Keir and Keir is my neighbour he's my neighbouring MP and friends with his wife Vic, we're quite good friends and then for Keir every time to stand up and them to be like what's happening to Julie Psydick? I just thought why don't I just step away for a bit let it die down and then at one point I'll come back although Keir's going now Keir's going But you, I think you voted for Corbyn once and then for Andy Burnham once. And so you must have a relationship with Andy Burnham. I mean, are we going to see a great resurgence, a resurrection of Tulip Sadiq's Labour career?

28:00Who knows? I mean, if you have any contacts with Andy, ask him. But basically, I have been in the party for 25 years. So, of course, I know Andy Burnham because if you're in the Labour Party for 25 years, you will come across Andy because he's been in the party for, I don't know, 40 years or something. So I do know him quite well. And at the end of the day, I know this sounds like a politician's answer, but it really is the truth. The Labour Party is bigger than one person, right? If you are Labour and if you cut my veins, Rachel, it does. It does lead right, I'm afraid. I am Labour through and through.

28:34You are not moving me away from the party. I'll get behind whoever's the leader because for me at the moment with someone with a Muslim last name it's about making sure there isn't divisive politics it's making sure we have a Labour government and a Labour prime minister so I'll get behind whoever's prime minister am I disappointed there's no woman standing yes of course I am I mean I feel a bit despondent about the fact that we have yet another male leader of the Labour Party. And can I just say, I did ask two women to stand. For who? One of them said she didn't think she could get enough nominations.