183. From Bradford to Westminster: Faith, Identity, and Power (Naz Shah)

20:40Rory Stewart:Sorry, remind me, how does she give up the two brothers? What does that mean? Because her brothers said, give up the kids and we'll look after you. And she chose her kids. So she lost effectively her two brothers support. So here was one more brother left. She's only got three brothers. And that brother, if you do not marry his son, you will then separate them in death in their graves. the language that was used. You imagine saying that to a 15-year-old. You're responsible if your mother loses the last brother she's got. That's on you because she's given up the brothers because of you children.

21:11Am I right that you were in Pakistan in the first place, in part because your mother had recognised that the man she was now with, Uncle Azam, was abusing her and potentially abusing you as well? So she thought that he had designs on me. He said, the grass is greener with your daughter. So when, before I hit puberty, but by 12, when I was hitting puberty, it was like, go to Pakistan. and she left me there for two and a half years. And then the forced marriage happened at the same time. And she eventually killed him. Yeah. And that is, I mean, you go through this wave after wave of this story that suddenly we've got a murder.

21:44Yeah. I mean, just talk us through that. Well, she got arsenic from Pakistan. She visited Pakistan as a folklore remedy for sexual drive. So she made him, you know, she killed his libido for a few months because she gave him a dose that would stop him from his sexual demands. So he was raping her and his friends were raping her and all that. So he went to prison. He literally pimped her from prison for favors. So there wasn't just him. So she went through all this abuse and exploitation. And who was this man?

22:10Rory Stewart:I'm so sorry. But, you know, was he working? Was he a relative? How did she come across him? He was a neighbor's nephew and she needed a house, Rory. She wanted a house. So she sold all the jewelry and said to the neighbors, she went to her brothers. They wouldn't buy the house because she couldn't get a mortgage. So she was cleaning. She was doing voluntary work. She was doing bits and pieces with disabled children, but she couldn't get a mortgage. He bought the house in his name. That was the noose around her neck because she'd given up all her jewelry to have the safety of a secure home for her children.

22:41The first day he took her to the house, he raped her. And that was what set her life on that trajectory of abuse and sexual abuse. Me and my brother both had TB. You know, we were malnourished. We were living in abject poverty.

22:53Rory Stewart:You had TB in Britain or in... Yeah, in Britain. in Britain. Me and my brother both had TB when we were young. So the conditions that we were living in, we had outside toilets. We only ever stayed in one room because it was too cold. We couldn't heat the house. You know, we lived even in Britain at that time, we lived in real poverty. And my mum was a single parent. She didn't know the language. And Asim came along with bringing fruit for the kids. So to her, he was like a knight in shining armour. And then the neighbours said, well, he's a businessman. He's got a warehouse. Why don't you let him buy the mortgage, get the mortgage on his name, and then you can pay him back.

23:28And when your daughter turns 18, you can transfer the house. That was the noose that kept her in that space. That was the pressure. That was the leverage that he used on her. And this was a fallen woman, remember. So she was a dishonored woman because her husband had left her. Because he gets away, she carries a burden of shame. And now if you imagine, she can't talk about sexual abuse. We don't talk about sex anyway. We don't talk about sexual abuse. And then she's a fallen woman. And this man is a married man as well. you know so all of this concoction comes together there is no way she's going to tell anybody about what she's actually going through so when she did kill him when he did die and when when she went to court she did not tell the truth at all out of shame yeah absolutely your definition of the truth do you think if she told the truth i.e she was being raped she was being farmed out to his friends and he was pimping her out when he was in jail and he was drug dealing and all that stuff you think there's a possibility that she might have been let free.

24:26I genuinely think that that is true because even the jury of the foreman stepped up and it was very rare, very unusual. When we did the campaign to go to the court of appeal, he actually came forward and went to the press and said, had I known what I know now, I would have never found her guilty of murder. Because it was a huge case at the time, wasn't it? It was like all over the media. How has your mother come through that? I'm fascinated by, because you still describe somebody who doesn't speak English, doesn't know how to do the NHS app. She's been through this experience of kills somebody, gets sent to jail, doesn't defend herself, almost takes the punishment.

25:06And then you campaign and you persuade Jack Straw to part commute the sentence and you get a big campaign going. But I just wonder how your mother comes through it and what you make of your mother today. So in some ways, we dragged her through it because she was still, I'm not going to talk about this. She was still the concept of Izzat, Izzat, Izzat, which is honour. I can't talk about this because of shame, because of, you know, what the prospects for you guys, etc. in the community. And then we had to literally sit her down and figuratively speaking, shake her head and say to her, look, who's Izzat trying to protect?

25:38The brothers who abandoned you, the community who abandoned you, you know, all of this. We're serving that sentence with you. You know, we lost the house. The house went back to Uncle Azam's estate. You know, we lost all of that. We became homeless again. You know, I spent nights in a crack house. You know, the poverty that we had, the psychological impact it had on my brother from A-star model student went to, he was only 13. You know, her went to truanting, smoking, all of these things. my sister was sent to Pakistan just before she got arrested my mum was sent to Pakistan I had to get her back to stop her from having the same fate that I did of a marriage to another cousin who was lined up for her so all of these things we had to really say to my mum who are you trying to protect you know we want you home so then she agreed to tell her story but it was like washing your dirty linen in public so even at the time it was horrific for her and even now me writing this book.

26:30That's why it's taken me 10 years from when I was first offered a book deal to actually get to it. Because the amount of stuff that you've got to deal with, the amount of pain that you've got to go through to write it, and then to take your family on that journey with you. Because my sister and my brother, they loved the inspiration of a story. My sister said to me very frankly last week, she went, it's an inspiring story, but I just wish it wasn't ours. Because it's painful for them.

26:55Rory Stewart:When you were first getting involved in politics 10 years ago, how much of this did you talk about openly or have you become more confident talking openly about these kind of things over the last 10 years? I've become more confident talking about them. I've become more responsible for talking about them because you have to be, you have to, you know, if Islam says something beautiful, which is what do you give, what God will ask you, what you did with the gifts I gave you. And the gift I've got is power, right? It's a platform. So what do I do with that platform if I'm not going to make it better for others?

27:26And even by talking about this, talking about sexual abuse, talking about is it an honor? Because it still happens. There are still girls and boys who are forced into marriage, who are coerced into marriage. They might not even recognize it because they see it as it's a normal, done thing. That's what parents do. No, it isn't. And to be able to stand up, to give them the confidence to say, look, this is not okay. And to get the community to move and shift, you have to then give confidence to people to talk about it.

27:54Rory Stewart:And do you have people from the community, or indeed politically, saying, you can't say any of these things because you're going to give a bad reputation to our community? No. So, so far, I can honestly say to you the amount of the, and my, if you'd have been in Bradford last night, you know, looking at the people that were there last night, it was two nights ago, you know, you would see all the businesses in Bradford, the Pakistani men who were proudly supporting me. And this is so interesting because your mother's fear around Izzet would have been that by talking openly about this, you would shame yourself.

28:25Rory Stewart:And in fact, you had a great success. You've become a public figure. You've been elected. People from these communities are voting for you in Bradford. That's another side of it which is difficult to understand. So tell us about that other side, that positive side, where you're getting men from this community instead of ostracizing you in the way that your mother feared. In fact, supporting you, voting for you, making a member of parliament. What's going on there? I mean, this is another interesting thing. So there's one member of a family who's spoken to another member of a family saying, why she'd done this, didn't she?

28:54Because I went viral. When I stood for parliament in 2015, when I got selected, on International Women's Day, I put out a blog because I was against Galloway, right? And we know Galloway doesn't have a reputation for, his supporters certainly don't have a reputation for a clean, clean campaign. So I thought, well, he's going to drag this up, so I might as well claim it and put it out there. So I wrote a blog inspired by Barack Obama's dreams of my father. Mine was dreams for my mother and my daughter because I have a daughter. And then it went viral. And that's when it turned, it was like a little by-election campaign where everybody turned up and they really put their effort into it, won the seat.

29:30So I talked about it then. And did he not try to make out The story wasn't real. Oh, yeah. It was a forced marriage. So somebody paused as my dead father in Pakistan and got a copy of my second nikah number. So the legal, the law here, you cannot be married at 15. You can only be married at 16. Now it's changed to 18, rightfully so. And so we had to re-register the nikah when I was 16. So when I went back to Pakistan at 16, I had a second nikah registered. So in the same building, you had two marriage certificates. So he was, so somebody went, paused as my dead father, pulled out. And in the Hustins, the first Hustins, he pulled out Mynagarnama and said, she is lying.

30:06She wasn't 15. And it wasn't a forced marriage because her mother was there. And it was like, mate, you're so off for it, you know. And he just, you know, he carried on like that. But hey, that's history as it is. But he, a lot of women's rights campaigners spoke up because what he did was undid a lot of the work that we've done around forced marriage and stuff around, you know, your parents. The fact that your parent was there, your parent might have put you into this forced marriage in the first instance. So he got condemned a lot for that. But what I didn't talk about was how we got through those years, you know, what it was actually like.

30:38So the campaign is out there. My mum's story is very much out there. It's in, you know, anybody can go to the Court of Appeal, look through the documents and see all of that. I've got a documentary on BFI from 20-something years ago, 26 years ago, a young me still with a cigarette in my hand and my cat, you know, but now it's like reflecting on all that. You get to a stage where pre-menopause kind of thing in my 50s and it's what do I do with all of this? How do you tell this story? I wanted to tell my story in 2015. I'm glad I didn't at the time. I'm glad I'm doing it now because I'm wiser. So, you know, it's just to influence, I suppose.

31:13And do you worry that in a way, because it is such an extraordinary story and you've now put it into a book that will be kind of there forever, as it were. Do you worry about being defined by this issue as a politician? No, because that's up to me, isn't it? It's up to what I do with it. So for me, the thing I want to be defined by is my fight for justice. And that is it. And that justice could be in other forms. So I did the assisted dying bill and I was on the bill committee and I was fighting around vulnerability and safety. So safety and justice go hand in hand for me.

31:46Rory Stewart:Sorry to explain. You were worried that some vulnerable people could be pressured into assisted dying. So the idea of coercion, because coercion is so subtle. and if you're not an expert in it, it's really, really hard to pick up. So coercion and anorexia was another thing for that. So interestingly there, within the Labour Party, you've got a colleague who's pushing hard for this bilimacystidying and you're sounding notes of caution and that's partly your experience of coercion. It's partly your faith leading you to be more cautious around these things. Yes, absolutely, Rory. I have a responsibility to safeguard because I don't want that injustice to happen.

32:21So that is what I want to be defined by. I want to be defined by leadership. I want to be defined by she's brave enough to put her head above a parapet. But that's on any issue. Although it stems from what my experience and lived experience is. But the jury's bill, you know, that's coming through. All of these things, I want to be able to contribute to them. And do you worry? One worry I had reading through the book was I was sort of putting myself in the mindset of a kind of Nigel Farage or Richard Tice or one of these reformed people. You read this book and say, you know, this shows that we're right.

32:54we should not try to mix our cultures in the way that has happened and that therefore mass immigration has failed. Do you worry that this paints a picture of this part of Pakistan and its impact on a place like Bradford in a way that actually your political opponents would exploit and use against you? So I had to think about that. I'd be very naive and silly if I didn't think about that. But here's the thing. I give an example. When I was campaigning for my mum, people would come up to me for the petition for Jack Straw, saying, Naz, I support you, but I can't put my name to this. Now, in 2016, a girl was taken, went from Bradford, my constituent, was brutally raped and murdered, Samia Shahid, in Pakistan.

33:37It was a clear so-called honour killing. Now, in 2019, I had an event. So, I support Islamic Relief's campaign for Honor Her. And it's a campaign to literally claim that word back. And when I did an event, 25 of the top Pakistani businessmen put their names on those tables and sponsored them and sponsored the campaign for Honor Her. So communities shift. It was only over 100 years ago that a woman threw herself in front of a king's horse, right, to change things. You know, 50 % of the population are women. We gave birth to the other 50%. That doesn't mean to say you throw every man out with the bathwater, what you do is you change the culture and you change the mindset.

34:16So you change the culture of parliament and the institution itself. And that's what you did. But you do that by working with those communities, not against those communities. Okay, now it's a really quick break, then back for more.

34:32Rory Stewart:And one of the things I think is so wonderful about you is that you're taking a huge risk, which is that by being honest, you think you can solve the problem more clearly if you're honest about what the problem is. Whereas a lot of us feel maybe if we don't talk about it, we don't have to confront it because it will help our enemies by talking about it. Tell us about, how would you explain maybe to an international audience, because this has become so politicized in the US, the issue around grooming gangs? What was that story? What went wrong? What should we do about it? So back in 2013, 12, before I had political ambitions, I worked with a guy, a really amazing guy called Ansah Ali, who set up Together Against Grooming in Bradford.

35:11We remember we did a sermon, Friday sermon, for all the mosques. And we still, at the time, we think it was the first time it was ever done in the history of Islam. But I know it was the first time it was ever done in the UK, where we campaigned to get every mosque to condemn grooming, to talk about it and talk about child sexual exploitation. This was before the Robinsons and the Laxley Ennens and Rupert Laws talked about grooming. So we stood by the victims and the community stood by the victims. And what happened was it then got, you had the selective outrage for victims from people like Tommy Robinson and others.

35:48And then the first, there were campaign, you know, this idea that Muslims haven't stood up against this. That is one for the birds and the bees because we have got a track record, but that never makes the press. We've got a track record. I remember being on TV talking about this before my political career. So there is absolutely, it is not racist to say there is a pertinent model of abuse, of grooming, of street grooming, where the abuser is of Pakistani heritage. That is not racist to say, right? What is not right is to say every Pakistani is like that. That's not okay. So what do you do? When we do the drink driving campaign, we didn't go to the churches on a Sunday to talk to people about not drinking on a Saturday night and getting drunk driving home.

36:30We went to the pubs and the clubs and a public health campaign to try and shift a culture and a mindset. And it's the same. You don't go to the right wing press to talk about the issues. You go to work with those communities. And where I think we failed is we've not talked to them communities. And we've allowed the banging of the noise to drown out what the actual community is. What's your honest assessment of the state of, first of all, that issue, but also your assessment of the relations between the Pakistani community in Bradford and the white working class community in Bradford? So my honest opinion is that I think we have lots and lots of miscommunication.

37:12I think that is fanned and fuelled through the media. I think we need to build a lot of bridges. I think we need to we need to be stronger. The Muslim community. Now, when I said in Parliament not so long ago, you know, Muslims stand with victims of grooming. Lots of people WhatsApp me and said, thank you, finally, finally, finally, because it's been lost because people shrink and people shrink when you get attacked. And when people shrink, it doesn't give you the confidence to talk about these things. So it's about reclaiming that space and that's down to people in positions of leadership and we need to do that more forcefully.

37:41So when I'm talking about Pakistanis against grooming, I need to claim that space back to say this is what Muslims actually stand for. That's on me and that's on the community to be more confident but we need to give them that confidence because they've shrunk because of Islamophobia and the attacks that they get.

37:56Rory Stewart:So many different things. I think there's another thing that Alisa was pushing towards there, but just to connect two threads in this. Is there a connection between that culture of is that on domestic abuse that you experienced with your father and your mother's boyfriend? Does that also create some of the background for the grooming gangs? I'll tell you what creates a background for grooming or anything. And specifically, it's about power juxtaposed with vulnerability and what really irks me really irks me is that the idea that it was because of racism that we didn't tackle it if that is reverse racism in itself because if you have an issue and this is it so Rory my my bane of my life is Bradley politics in Bradford and patriarchy right and that is about the Labour Party not dealing with block voting and selecting their candidates because they're Labour Party members and that's been going on for years.

38:49When you don't deal with that issue because you're afraid of what the community will say, that's racism. You wouldn't treat any of the community. So don't you tell me that you're actually being racist by not dealing with it. So for me, the idea that those people in positions of power, and this has never been looked at, and this is what I'm really pleased that we're starting to look at, is what about those police officers in South Yorkshire police at the time who said, no, they didn't treat them girls like humans. They did not see them. And it It took a Muslim man, it took Nazir Afzal to prosecute.

39:20It took a Muslim man to see those victims as victims and human beings worthy of justice. That's what it took. So when I look at that, it irks me the idea that, you know, these liberal white people who thought, oh, well, we can't do this because of culture. No, no, no, that's not. You wouldn't do that to any of the culture. So why do that to this culture or these members of these communities? Just broadening out to the sort of bigger picture of your political career, you've been a front bencher, but then you left the front bench because you voted in a particular way on Gaza. Your majority was trimmed very, very substantially.

39:57Understatement. Because of, I assume largely because of Gaza. Yeah. Just talk me through, from your perspective, what that issue has been like to deal with as an MP in Bradford West. So my constituency, I've got the largest Muslim constituency in the UK, 60%. You know, I'm born there, raised there. Palestine is something that also politicized me without a shadow of doubt. The thing for me was, what really upset me more was that I'd done so much on Palestine. And it was the, but I also recognize, it was difficult to recognize that.

40:28Rory Stewart:You were fired by Jeremy Corbyn for being more outspoken on Palestine than Jeremy Corbyn. Yes. So I was suspended for anti-Semitism, right? And what were you accused of doing? I tweeted out during the 2014 Gaza, when the war on Gaza happened, and I tweeted out things. You put an image of Israel inside of America, saying transportation. You know, why don't we just take Israel to America? It was a Finkelstein's meme. And then when I was suspended, I went and did the nonpolitical thing, which was work with the Jewish community, and didn't do it for the tick box exercise. I genuinely, I didn't understand it.

41:06And I was very, very honest about that because I didn't understand it. To me, anti-Semitism was the hatred of Jews. And I don't hate Jews. My first official engagement as a member of parliament was going to my local synagogue. And Rudy Lever, may he rest in peace, he was very, very, he then came out and said, she's not anti-Semitic. I'd been to a Cedar the week before, you know, with Rabbi Laura Janaklausner. And she was like, well, no, she's not anti-Semitic. So I was like, okay, so how do I apologize rather than trying to make a reason, you know, this is why, etc.

41:35Rory Stewart:What did you learn through that experience from sitting down with Jewish community and thinking about Israel? What I brought from my mind, which was from my background, was compassion. And what I got was compassion. I went into a synagogue. I was open and honest with the people in the synagogue who were very angry with me, rightfully so. They thought I was a Corbynister. You've got to remember, I didn't know left and right politics. I came into politics for fairness and justice. As naive as that sounds, I'm still in that space. So for me, it wasn't that. And they had an assumption that I was this Corbynist.

42:05I'd never met Jeremy Corbyn before he became the leader of a party. I'd become PPS to John MacDonald. I'd never actually met him before. So to me, it was about making sure that people understood that I don't have this hard left politics. There was an assumption that because I'm from Bradford and I'm Muslim and that's where I'm going to be. And actually, my big fight was around patriarchy. and then the Jewish community were very, Mark Gardner from CST came to see me the next day and actually said to me, you know, this is what it is. And then I thought, oh, okay, I get it. And when I got it, I was open about getting it.

42:38I wasn't trying to do the political spin of, you know, this is the reason I did it.

42:41Rory Stewart:What had you not understood about antisemitism before? So what I didn't understand, Rory, was the narratives. I understand it in the context of Islamophobia because of my experiences. I didn't understand that when you talk about Jews as a collective and the tropes that you use, it creates that hatred, it creates that division and it targets the community. And that Jews here are not responsible for the actions of Netanyahu, albeit it wasn't Netanyahu's time. The Jews here are not, you know, the idea that we lump people together and hold them responsible. And that is what, you know, I'd learned about Anne Frank when I was at school, I left at 12, but I didn't understand the Holocaust in all its horrors.

43:19you know I knew the horrors of people dying I knew the you know I'd learned about the shoes and the hair and all of these things I understood from Anne Frank's diary but I was very very young but I didn't understand how that manifested like it does and I see it as Muslims now how Muslims are treated in the press how we talk about Muslims it makes more sense and once Mark made that analogy to me it clicked and it dropped and I'm like okay so it's not about just hating people it's more than that it's how it is structured and manifests and that understanding was what I was missing So there's somebody coming from the Jewish community and somebody who's charged with protecting the Jewish community explains something and you get it but I wonder how you feel about the issue of Gaza like now, today Rory and I have been pointing out on the podcast that there's a real risk that with all the stuff that Trump does and particularly in recent weeks Iran that Gaza just keeps dropping further down the agenda.

44:16Yeah. And I just wonder whether what you've just described is an incredibly reasonable approach to something, whether there's a danger you lose a bit of the fire or whether that fire's still burning. Oh God, that fire still burns. That fire still burns. On the Palestinian issue, I just saw Hussam Zomlok, the Palestinian ambassador, last night. I'm really, really pleased that we've recognised Palestine. I'm really, really pleased. I'm not happy with this board of peace that's trying to, you know, I'm not convinced that it's going to achieve anything where it's going and the actors that are on that, you know, the right wing kind of bad faith actors.

44:49I'm not convinced that Trump's going to resolve that. I think it needs more leadership. But, you know, I am very, very much about peace in the Middle East. And I just, what's happening at the moment is, it is painful. It's painful because when I came into politics, I remember the day that Trump moved, in his last term, moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. And I was literally in tears. And one of my mentors said to me, God doesn't ask you to, you're not responsible for that. God asks you to do the best that you can do. That's all you have to do. So I realized actually, yes, because I couldn't have stopped it.

45:19I couldn't have done anything. But that did damage to the Palestinian cause, you know, where we need to get back to. I think we're lacking leadership on these issues now. I feel we have like, it's kind of like a bankruptcy of intellectual thought and leadership on these issues. And that worries me. So I'm very, very much, very, very much in that space of peace in the Middle East. But I understand a lot more in depth now of how do your politics works.

45:45Rory Stewart:Tell us a little bit then about how you analyze Israel's position, its military strength, what it's doing in Iran, what it's doing in Gaza, what it's doing in Lebanon, its perception of itself as vulnerable, other people's perception of it as very powerful and aggressive. What's your sense about Netanyahu's government? My sense of Netanyahu's government is it's not brilliant, it's not brilliant, it's not good for Israel, it's not good for peace in the region. His right-wing rhetoric is very concerning. It's not just his rhetoric, the idea of the previous guy, I forget his name, saying that Turkey is the next Iran.

46:19That was it. That is a worrying conversation. That's a worry. I think anywhere across the world, the idea of how we're moving into that right-wing space, I think we need to go back to the centre. I think that needs some real effort by other people. And I'm genuinely really pleased with the position we took in the last week.

46:40Rory Stewart:And on your constituents in Bradford, presumably they would be a little bit blunter and more outspoken on this issue than you are. I'm listening to you. It's become quite sort of, it's the only time you sounded more like a politician. Yes, I do. So one of the things that I've realised, Rory, is you come in here and I had a conversation today with this morning I had a meeting. My first one was the National Police Chiefs Council, chair of a National Police Chiefs Council on the issue of Islamophobia and the definition and how we need to work on it. And I said to Gavin this morning, I said, look, I says, you come in here and you want to change the world.

47:09And then you realise it's not by bashing and saying it publicly that the change happens. The change happens in conversations behind the doors. And it happens when you convene people and you find allies in your issues. It's not about, you know, grandstanding and looking out in the chamber and being able to say it forcefully. Will that change anything? Will that, you know, as I said this to the independents after the bruising election that I had by, you know, I held on by 707 votes. The only reason they didn't win was because they were crap at campaigning. If they were half as good as me, trust me, I wouldn't have been here.

47:40You know, so one of the things I've realised with that campaign is yes, you get it off your chest. You say what you need to say. But what then? What next? What have you achieved? Because you felt better. But we do not have, we do not have the moral authority to be outraged whilst there's still things to be done on Palestine. And that does not take me shouting. That takes me having conversations like politicians to convince people and make the case. And we need to do more of that. My last question, bringing it closer to home. What's your analysis of how Labour has gone from three-figure majority, landslide, to a place now where people are openly speculating that Nigel Farage could be prime minister, that Keir Starmer probably won't last the course, that we're below the Greens in the polls?

48:31Two questions. How have we got there? and can we get out of there sufficient for you with your 707 majority to get back in? Okay, so my majority I'm less concerned about. And the reason I'm less concerned about that is because I know my community was upset with the Labour Party, not me, right? So that's my responsibility to convince them I'm the best MP for them, right? So that I'm less worried about. And I'm being really honest, I'm less worried about Farage simply because I know that in the elections, local elections, when they take over more councils, as they've been doing, and making a crap of it and not knowing how it works because they want a shooting from the hip, they've not got leadership.

49:09Once you scratch the surface of Faraj's talking points, there isn't any depth there. Once that becomes apparent and the election isn't until 2029, I think it will be able to take a stronger case to the electorate. That's what I genuinely think. Call me naive, but I genuinely am an optimist. In terms of where we got to, I think we scored some serious home goals, you know, with the winter fuel allowance, with the child cap benefit. You know, I gave, one of the things when you get into politics and you realise that when you get into government, you know, it was a new thing for us after nine years in opposition.

49:40Am I going to vote against the government who I've just been elected with? Or am I just going to make my position clear by not voting with it, but I'm not going to vote against it? And those are difficult, you know, conversations you have to have. And then you'll know this better than anybody, guys. You know, is it the hill that you die on? Because there might be a bigger hill around the corner and you've got to make them assessments. So for me, for the child to child capital issue you've the party committed to a a you know review and and to be honest they didn't need that to tell them they should have just done in the first place you know the winter fuel allowance again home goals um how i think we've got there i just think i where were you ready for government we had so much crap in the nine years before and it was swallowed up in your time remember with party gate and all of these things that we didn't have the kind of robust political debates that we should have been having because the parliamentary time was concerned it became culture wars and it became all of them things and I think we should have been more prepared and I think you know and I'm glad as much as I liked Morgan as a person I think the factionalism was not healthy for us that was not healthy for us at all because you have to have differences of opinions and we didn't create the space for that and I and since Morgan's gone I think that has already shifted.

50:55So do you think Keir will be the leader of the next election and can win it? I don't know if he'll be the leader of a Labour Party in the next election. I genuinely don't know. But how he's behaved in the last few weeks has been, there has been a marked shift. I was in the PLP when he walked in the day before, day after Morgan left and the stand innovation he got. Because the one thing that we need to, as Labour MPs, we need to understand is what we can't have is the chaos of the last government. And that was after Prime Minister, after Prime minister and after prime minister we can't have that but equally how do you balance it and I'm and it's you know it's not something that I'm thinking I am thinking about it but it's not my ultimate decision it's down to the whole of a PLP do we want to get to that chaos but then how do we respond to people not liking Kia and there has been a shift in the last two weeks I've seen and I'm just like okay I'm going to rethink this now you know that's genuinely where I'm at but you know I'm one of those victory signatories to the letter which said we should have let Andy Vernon back in because even if it wasn't to challenge him if it was to bring if you've got the best you've got you've got your best horse outside you bring him into the you know you bring him on the track he helps you change that shift that narrative and we should have done that and I don't think I think that was bad optics of us from Kia from a leadership perspective because you don't run away from challenges but when you lead you put your foot your foot forward not back

52:15Rory Stewart:I guess returning to the question of the baratery, which is, I guess, these brotherhoods or these male networks. You were talking about Andy Burnham. And, of course, that was relevant because of a by-election. It's a by-election that the Green Party just won. And they won it partly through leaflets in Urdu, statements about Modi appealing to the baratery. I mean, what's going on there? What's the Green Party up to? And do you think that's the right way to campaign? Okay, I think that's all parties are guilty of that one, Rory. You know, I remember the Tories putting out leaflets in Hindi not so long ago.

52:48So there's no...

52:49Rory Stewart:And tell us about that because I don't think people know about that. Okay, so the Tories put out leaflets in certain areas where there was a Hindu majority communities in Hindi language. And that was just in the last general election. You know, people communicate... And so appealing in that case to Hindu communities against Muslim and Sikh communities. Yes. So there's the culture politics. And it comes back to the idea of where we've gone wrong in the last 10 years even. we've gone down this road where we've allowed culture politics and culture wars to infest our politics what didn't happen in denton which i really really do take issue is it wasn't secretarian voting that was not the case and it wasn't brotherly politics it was people who the young muslim community just like the ones in bradford west who did not like the leadership you know didn't use me didn't like the labor leadership for what reason why did young muslims not like the labor leadership well because on gaza and where the way the economy is going and the home goals that we've made haven't exactly covered his glory.

53:43So we've got a lot of, not just young Muslims, the white working class communities as well, don't exactly love us at the moment, do they? Let's be honest. So we've got a lot of work to do. And here was a fresh person, local, working class saying, do you know what? I'm going to go. And I remember speaking to one guy in Gorton because I went and doorknog. And he said, and he actually said to me, he said, oh, she's been to all the Palestinian rallies. And he said this to me. And I said, yeah, but But it was our government that gave recognition. And he said to me, and I actually went into his house to pray because I was fasting.

54:13And I think he still voted the Green candidate to be fair. But he was like, I'm just fed up of mainstream politicians. And that's a narrative across the board right now.

54:22Rory Stewart:On the sectarian thing, or non-sectarian thing, do you think we should be a little cautious of putting out leaflets, Tories appealing to Hindus against Sikhs and Muslims, or Labour appealing to Muslims against Sikhs? I mean, it begins to feel a bit like Northern Ireland when you start. And the problem is that you're reinforcing division. You're reinforcing community tension. You're reinforcing tensions between people. You're targeting key demographics. I'm not sure I agree with that. So here's the thing, right? I remember Nigel Farage attacking me when that last election happened and I put out a video in Urdu, right?

54:55I've got a language skill set and I've got older people. Like my mother doesn't understand fluent English, right? But she's not divided. She's very much part of the community. you know she gets a train up and down London and she goes to you know she knows how to make her way around all the charity shops and there ain't no Asian person there.

55:10Rory Stewart:Okay maybe not language okay I'm very happy you're communicating in a different language but I guess if the messages are deepening divisions between Muslim Hindu and Sikh communities or between white communities and non-white communities that's not a good thing right? Yeah that isn't a good thing I completely agree with you 100 % on that when we're going out to the electorate and when we're talking in a different language to be able to communicate with those who don't necessarily have English as their first language or as fluent English, and we're talking about policies, the language should be equal across the board.

55:41Translated, it shouldn't be as Muslims. But having said that, one thing I will caveat that with is when I'm talking to my lecturer in Bradford and the Tories have a problem with Islamophobia, if you think I'm not going to talk about it, you've got a different thing coming. Because the Tories would not give us a definition. In 2017, we were looking for a definition of Islamophobia. I am going to use that where they fill that community and they've targeted that community. So I am going to be saying reform is, this is what reform thinks about. This is a narrative that reform uses. This is it. It absolutely divides.

56:13That I won't apologize for. But ultimately, it's about the policies. And you will find, I promise you, in my constituency, I had a text from, you know, when the business stuff was happening from one of my leading business guys who will still vote for me. But it was like, your Labour government, no. And he sent me an article. I get that all the time. But so you've still got the policies affect the communities. And, you know, Bradford has got more startups than anywhere outside of London. I can promise you every person wants to be a businessman, wants to be self-employed, and they want to create wealth, right?

56:43Wealth creation is not a bad thing. Progressive politics for me and progressive socialism is not a bad thing. How do you instill that? That comes back to our policies. That doesn't come back to whether you like the Muslims or not. That comes back to wealth creation is wealth creation and poverty ain't asking you whether you're white or black or brown poverty affects you all the kid the lad in bradford to the lad in barnsley white working class asian muslim working class the same issues affect them all that's what we need to be talking about that's what we need to take to our electorate and that's what we're not doing well enough well said um i also i think this thing about sector i hated the way that on the back of gordon and denton they talked about Including Keir Starmer, your leader.

57:24Yeah, because it just felt to me like the Greens had put together a very effective bi-electrical campaign and they targeted key demographics.

57:32Rory Stewart:I don't mind targeting demographics. What I mind is if you're increasing community tension by pitting people against each other. Yeah, yeah. And you've definitely had it in Bradford at times, you've had it in Leicester at times where essentially conflicts that are happening in other parts of the world come in and really affect local politics. Yeah, of course they do. And I also get a bit nervous when people start taking on the battles from abroad. And I'm going to equally offend all the parties here. I have conservative colleagues literally taking Modi's line on Kashmir and Hamrick through the House of Commons.

58:07Rory Stewart:I'm afraid largely because his voter base in Harrow wants him to do that. I have of Labour colleagues speaking in Urdu to Pakistani television, taking Pakistani lines. You've got Bangladeshi colleagues taking lines on different political allegiances in Bangladesh. And you've got reform taking Donald Trump's lines. Right. And actually, you know, often Israelis will say it's an anti-Semitic trope to talk about people taking Israeli lines. But I'm trying to say that it isn't actually just about that happening with Israel. It's happening with Cyprus, it's happening with Kashmir, happening in Crossroads.

58:43Rory Stewart:At some level one's got to say, you're a British member of parliament, what we've got to think about is the British national interest, not the question of what somebody's relatives back home wants to happen. This is global Britain. This is what was created by your government. Global Britain. That's it. That comes back to it, doesn't it? It comes back down to Palestine, where we're at, with the Balfour Declaration. I remember when we were celebrating 100 years of Balfour Declaration, I went in and spoke. Yes, we can celebrate the part that was delivered, but there was a part that wasn't delivered, mate.

59:14And we need to, as Britain, we have an obligation. So we have to. Kashmir is exactly the same stuff. Now, people of heritage, of Kashmir heritage, and there's a whole generation still, you know, very, very knock on everything that happened. Every time that something happens in Kashmir, the Kashmir groups go to their MPs, have lots of pictures. And, you know, and what worries me is that there's not the younger generation involved in that conversation. I want to start that conversation up more because it's an injustice and it's an inequality. And we have a responsibility for that. And I think we abdicate our responsibility at this time because we are big, big, big Britain.

59:45Rory Stewart:But we also have to accept that sometimes communities have to be challenged because they can be too close to the conflict. They're too embedded in a particular view. And, you know, I'm an equal offender. I want to challenge pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-Indian, pro-Pakistani, pro-Turkish, pro-Greek. I want to challenge them all. It's the ant you should challenge. Because people are not objective. They can't look at these things cleanly. They come from where they come. Somebody needs to step back and say, what is the UK national interest here? Not what does this particular community think from their particular view about the rights to norms.

1:00:22I get it, right? When everybody turns up, and I have said this to the community at times, everybody turns up for a Kashmir photo and I said, guys, if you did this for me, have an education policy or something else that the Tories did it'd be really really helpful you know you have that and you have that in a humorous way and with Pakistan you know I get frustrated what's happening at the moment in Pakistan with Imran Khan and my constituents no matter where they're from they have a belonging a sense of belonging to their home country to immigrants right and then that that some sense of belonging isn't just about race and where you've come from it is that kind of Farage and Trump belonging of values that are aligned you know how do you then separate?

1:01:03It's the same thing with right-wing politics, whether it's Victor Orban, whether it's, you know, all of these right-wing people who are coming together and talking about things. So for me, what really worries me and keeps me up at night is we don't have that kind of leadership in politics anymore. So we had this layer of the, the last kind of leader, I mean, Mamdani kind of books a trend, but the last kind of leader was the Obama-esque type. And after that, all we've got is the Trumps and the Farages and all the rest of it. Where's the next tier of leadership? Where's the leadership that steps up?

1:01:36And Zach Polanski, I don't think, is the answer. You know, I don't think all of them carries. The problem is you've got the charisma on social media, which is two minutes of an ice speech and all airy-fairy. But the detail of that, and you know, you guys have been in government, you know what it's like. the detail of how it actually works at the petrol pump at the dining table when it costs you your bananas cost more or your milk cost more or your bread costs more and it costs you more for your shoes and all of these things and taxes and all of these things they've got a clue about that stuff they ain't got a clue Faraj hasn't got a clue and it is Tory 2.0 the way he's carrying on let's be honest right and then you've got Polanski who talks a good talk but where does it where's the actual detail of how to run institutions.

1:02:19How do you, where's that leadership? And for me, pushing against Farage is about offering, making an offer to the electorate. Because, you know, there is, and like I said, poverty ain't looking at what race you belong to. It ain't looking at whether you're white working class or whether you're brown working class. It is just poverty. Certainly not looking at Nigel Farage. No, definitely not, Hal. Anyway, listen, lovely to talk to you. Well done with the book. It's an amazing read. It really is. Thank you. And yeah, I think about your mum quite a lot. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us.

1:02:47Thank you for having me.

1:02:51Well, she is quite a woman and it's quite a story.

1:02:55Rory Stewart:It's an incredible story. And as you say, I know very few people who communicate as accurately and clearly the sort of warts and all story of some of the things that are happening within the community in Bradford, for example. I mean, it slightly reminds me of when we interviewed Anshir Rayner, who I thought was a far better communicator, more relaxed, more funny, more open about her own child of extreme poverty than most sociologists or politicians talk about it. I thought the moment that really revealed her as a communicator was just the naturalness and the detail with which she talked about her life in the village in Nazan Kashmir.

1:03:35Rory Stewart:Every detail of exactly how you move the buffalo dung around for the roof, for the fertilizer. for that. It's also the reason I was interested in her being defined by this because it is an extraordinary book and anybody who reads it will just think this you know even something like me it's very hard to compute that here's an MP that sits in parliament and this is the life that she led and this is where her politics have come from but she is a great communicator she really is and I thought it was fascinating as well the way she you know because you pointed out to get to get done by Jeremy Corbyn for anti-Semitism when he was leader of the Labour Party.

1:04:13You've got to be kind of out there. And yet, she, unlike a lot of the Corbynistas who I think went away and basically said, oh, we're the victims of this, we're being sort of misrepresented, etc. She went away on a kind of voyage of discovery to say, why did I make that mistake? And why didn't I understand it?

1:04:30Rory Stewart:You'll see in the, you know, but I mean, when people go on Wikipedia and research her, they'll see that she retweeted stuff on the grooming gangs and on Israel, which absolutely feeds into a far-right narrative where she was portrayed as profoundly anti-Semitic defense of the grooming gangs. But what becomes clear when she talks is that isn't her position at all. In fact, she, I think, is genuine in trying to really put effort into understanding the position of the Jewish community. And she is brutal in her criticism of the grooming gangs and the failure to act on them. I mean, your point has got to be the big point underlying all this, which is, it's a bit like in a tiny way, people often say to me, how can you be so rude about parliament and policy as you're going to put people off?

1:05:20Rory Stewart:How can she be so rude about her own community without worrying that the far right is going to exploit that? Because I guess if you're from the right listening to this, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, as you said, this sort of confirms people's precious. No, sent away at 12, forced marriage with a cousin, boyfriends farming out women for rape. I mean, it sort of plays into that agenda. What she was trying to say, I think, is that unless people like her stand up against it and challenge it and define it in a different way, then it won't change. I think she was trying to tell us that things are changing.

1:05:55Rory Stewart:Yeah, and also that unless you describe the problem, you can't solve it. And thirdly, I thought, very moving how much the Muslim community coming behind her and the Bradford community comes behind her. Rather than being ostracized, she's been voted in and celebrated. I quite liked her confidence about her own position sitting on a majority of 707, saying, I'm in a better place than the government as a whole. I've got to say, anybody who beats George Galloway is to be commended. There's also things she didn't put in the book because she's almost too modest to mention. She fostered a young Afghan when he was 14.

1:06:35Rory Stewart:And so she's almost an honorary grandmother. He's now got children. She was herself in foster care. She doesn't talk much about that either. I do think there's something amazing. And she left formal education at 12. Yeah. She's dead right at the start. She's really just only started reading books again. But she's bloody bright. And I'll tell you what, they should listen to some of the stuff she's saying about Faraj as well. Because I think there just isn't enough confidence to my mind in the way that Labour attacked Faraj and she's got it. I could have gone going forever. One of the only things that I would love to talk to her about more is the many positive aspects of Pakistani culture and even Pakistani male culture.

1:07:11Rory Stewart:I think it would have been nice to hear on that because I think she'd be the first to accept that yes, Izzat and Anna have horrible aspects. They also have things which are very positive. It would be nice if we ever got her back to talk about some of the things that we know. Well, as we know, Roy, from a recent episode, you were very much in the Shia Muslim tradition. We didn't get onto that either. I think she also comes from a Sayyid family. I think she's descended from the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Well, look, I thought, wonderful. Thank you for pushing us to interview Nasser. An incredible story.

1:07:47Rory Stewart:And And also a very, very different story. We've interviewed Sadiq Khan, we've interviewed Sajid Javid. They also have stories about parents coming from Pakistan. Sajid's mother also struggles with NHS apps, has to be translated for by Sajid when she goes into the doctor. But they've not gone with buffalo dung on their heads. And I would have been interested to see what she feels she has in common and doesn't have in common with that whole experience and everybody's different trajectories. Anyway, we're lucky to have her in parliament, lucky to have her on the show. Thank you. See you soon.

1:08:22Hi, it's Steph McGovern here from The Rest Is Money. Now, obviously, there are big economic consequences to all the geopolitical turmoil. Listen to us to find out how investors are reacting and whether we're heading to a financial Armageddon. I'm talking to Karen Ward, a chief market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. Listen to The Rest Is Money to get her take.