Tulip Siddiq furore brings Keir Starmer's judgement into sharp focus

When Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem was abducted from his home in Bangladesh by armed men, his four-year-old daughter was too young to understand what was happening. “They dragged me away, I was barefoot,” he told me, his voice choked with emotion. “My little daughter was running behind me with my shoes saying, ‘take it, papa,’ as if she thought I was going away.”

He was held in solitary confinement for eight years, handcuffed and blindfolded, still unaware of where he was being held or why. The 40-year-old British-trained lawyer is one of the so-called “disappeared” in Bangladesh, critics of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s prime minister for over 20 years, until she was ousted last August.

Hasina’s regime oversaw some of the worst violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 war of independence, with hundreds killed, including at least 90 on her last day in power. Hasina herself is also controversial as she is the aunt of Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, who last week resigned as Sir Keir Starmer’s anti-corruption minister following a series of corruption allegations she denies.

The allegations include claims that Siddiq’s family siphoned off up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh and that she used London properties linked to her aunt’s allies. The government’s ethics watchdog later found she had not breached the ministerial code, but Siddiq resigned anyway. But that may not necessarily be the end of the matter.

The episode has sparked concerns about Starmer’s judgment and Labour’s approach to courting the Bangladeshi vote. Given Labour has long known about Siddiq’s ties to her scandal-hit aunt, questions are now being asked why the party did not foresee this situation. The case of Bin Quasem was first raised with her as far back as 2016.

He and other “disappeared” people in Bangladesh have since represented an awkward tension between Siddiq’s publicly stated views on human rights. For example, she has long campaigned for the release of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Iran but has shown a marked indifference in public statements to the suffering and extrajudicial killings under her aunt’s regime in Bangladesh.

Siddiq has also met Russian President Vladimir Putin with her aunt and appeared on BBC television as a spokesperson for the Awami League, the party Hasina has led since 1981. Siddiq has also thanked members of the Awami League for helping her get elected as a Labour MP in 2015. Two pages from her website from 2008 and 2009, which outlined her links to the party, were later removed.

Once in parliament, however, Siddiq told reporters that she had “no ability or desire to influence politics in Bangladesh.” The links, therefore, were not secret, but perhaps within Labour, they were not seen as a bad thing, especially as in recent years, the party has shown little sign of distancing itself from the Awami League. Then-Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons in 2012 that they were “sister organisations”, a view echoed by many of his colleagues.

Starmer, who entered parliament at the same time as Siddiq in 2015, has met Hasina on multiple occasions. These include in 2022 when the then-Bangladeshi prime minister was in London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, a meeting that Bin Quasem called “heartbreaking and shocking.” An ally of Starmer’s argued that his meeting with Hasina was “perfectly legitimate” and did not equate to endorsing her policies.

Over the years, Labour has clearly sought to maintain good relations with Bangladesh, possibly reflecting the political realities of Britain, particularly in parts of the capital. “You can’t succeed in east London without understanding the Bangladeshi vote,” explained one veteran Labour campaigner. However, those who fail to understand the country’s divided and turbulent politics can end up offending the very people they are trying to please. “You need to weigh your words carefully,” the campaigner said. “If you are too openly for one [Bangladeshi] party, you will get criticised.”

An analysis by the Financial Times suggests there are at least 17 UK constituencies where the Bangladeshi voting population is larger than the Labour majority. Starmer’s own constituency of Holborn and St Pancras has at least 6,000 adult residents of Bangladeshi origin. Is it possible that this combination of enthusiasm and political pragmatism blinded Starmer to a potential corruption storm? Shortly after winning his election in July, he appointed Siddiq to the Treasury to lead the UK’s anti-corruption efforts.

“Starmer has a blind spot when it comes to his friends and political allies,” said one Labour source. “It’s nothing new.” Investigative journalist David Bergman, who has spent a decade revealing Siddiq’s links to Bangladeshi politics, points out that context is crucial. “It wasn’t a major story until Labour was in the ascendency, Tulip Siddiq became a minister, and the Awami League government collapsed,” he said.

He argues that concerns should have been raised within the party years ago. “Firstly, the blind spot around Tulip Siddiq’s failure to respond to the enforced disappearances in Bangladesh,” Bergman said. “And then the blind spot about how close her links were to the Awami League in the UK.” When I put this to one Labour MP, they responded that there was a blind spot in both the British media and the Labour Party when it came to Bangladesh.

“There are roughly 600,000 people in the British Bangladeshi diaspora,” they said. “This country is the eighth most populous on the planet, and yet we [the British media] have heard nothing about it since the events of August 5th.” The corruption investigations into Hasina could run for some time, potentially causing more problems for Starmer’s top team in the coming months, while Siddiq remains a Labour MP.

For Bin Quasem, the collapse of Hasina’s regime saw him suddenly woken up in his cell, bundled into a car, thrown into a ditch, and eventually allowed to return home to be reunited with his two daughters. When he last saw them, they were toddlers; now, they are young adults. “I didn’t really recognise them, and they didn’t recognise me,” he told me, his voice breaking with tears. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to accept that I never saw my daughters grow up. I missed the best time of my life. I missed their childhood.”