From Brexit protests to freeing detained constituent: Who is Tulip Siddiq?
Share:
Anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned after controversy over links to her aunt's ousted political movement in Bangladesh. The Hampstead and Highgate MP is probably best known for campaigning for the release of her constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran for six years.
Politics latest: Embattled City minister leaves government. The mother-of-two also hit the headlines in 2019 when she delayed having a C-section so she could vote against Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, turning up to parliament heavily pregnant and in a wheelchair.
After giving birth she went on to make history by becoming the first MP to vote by proxy. Ms Siddiq was first elected to parliament in 2015, in what was then the most marginal seat in the country, and before that served as a local councillor in Camden.
The 42-year-old is a niece of Bangladesh's longest-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August following an uprising against her 20-year leadership. In blog posts written in late 2008 and early 2009, when she was a Labour activist, Ms Siddiq described campaigning with her aunt in the south Asian country's general election and celebrating her victory.
Ms Siddiq's maternal grandfather was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's first president, who was assassinated along with most of his family in a military coup in 1975. Her mother and aunt survived because they were abroad at the time - her mother going on to claim political asylum in the UK, where the Labour MP was born.