Betrayal of the Community: How Rushanara Ali and Tulip Siddiq Failed British-Bangladeshis

Rushanara Ali’s recent resignation as a British government cabinet minister has placed her alongside Tulip Siddiq in the ignominious ranks of disgraced Labour British-Bangladeshi politicians. Their failure is not only political but moral, personal, and communal, a betrayal of the trust, pride and respect placed in them by the very people whose heritage they claim to champion.

From their first day in Parliament, Ali and Siddiq wrapped themselves in the language of pride and progress. They spoke of their Bangladeshi heritage, their immigrant roots, and the power of representation. They invited the community to see them as proof that British-Bangladeshis could rise to the highest levels while staying true to values, integrity, and pride.

The community believed them. It campaigned for them. It gave them votes, respect, admiration, and trust. Community leaders urged young people to see them as the best of the community.

They repaid that trust with contempt, disdain, and a litany of hypocritical betrayals. They have taken the honour placed in their hands and cast it aside, leaving the British-Bangladeshi community not uplifted but stunned, as local media outlet Dazzling Dawn observed:

“These two resignations are seen as shameful, and the community is grappling with a profound sense of disappointment.”

Ministerial Hypocrisy

Siddiq resigned as the UK Anti-Corruption Minister after a barrage of corruption allegations, soon to be heard in the Bangladesh courts. The irony defies parody. Meanwhile, Ali, serving as Homelessness Minister, was caught evicting her own tenants to hike up her rental income by an additional £700 a month. These are not mere lapses in judgment, they are outright betrayals of the very offices they held.

Palestine Hypocrisy

Rushanara Ali repeatedly professed her support for Palestine, assuring her constituents that she backed a ceasefire and humanitarian action. Yet when the Gaza ceasefire amendment came before Parliament in November 2023, she abstained, refusing to take a stand when it mattered most.

To proclaim solidarity in safe settings but withhold her vote in the chamber is not leadership, it is political cowardice in its purest form. The backlash was immediate: The Guardian reported that local constituents gathered outside her London office, chanting “Shame on you” and accusing her of abandoning her own principles. British-Bangladeshi lawyer Tasnime Akunjee has campaigned against Rushanara Ali’s hypocrisy for many years. He said:

“Rushanara Ali is the very embodiment of everything rotten in modern British politics, self-serving, greedy, and utterly without principle.

She abandoned Shamima Begum, a vulnerable child from her own Tower Hamlets constituency, who was groomed and brainwashed into joining ISIS, leaving Begum and the corpse of her dead child to rot in a Syrian refugee camp.

She abandoned the Palestinians, even as their bodies lay in the rubble of Gaza, having shamelessly used their cause in previous years to win votes in Bethnal Green.

And now, her hypocrisy and greed are laid bare, evicting tenants without a shred of compassion, all to pocket a few extra pounds a month for herself. I could carry on and on with many more examples.

This is not leadership. This is the politics of betrayal. She is like a vulture picking over the bones of our community, and she needs to be rooted out of British politics.”

Selective Human Rights Advocacy

Tulip Siddiq’s campaign to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Iranian detention was highly public and widely praised, presenting her as a principled human rights advocate. Yet when Ahmad bin Quasem, a British-trained barrister, was detained under equally disturbing circumstances by Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh and subjected to years of illegal detention in a windowless dungeon, desperately needing political champions, Siddiq remained silent.

The UK’s Channel 4 interchange with Siddiq displayed her true self. The contrast is glaring: Siddiq mobilized her influence when the cause elevated her profile, but withheld it when it risked personal discomfort. It is evidence that Siddiq does not act on principle, but on selective morality and virtue signalling.

Silence on Hasina’s Repression

For 15 years, Sheikh Hasina’s regime in Bangladesh crushed democracy: opposition leaders jailed, journalists silenced, protesters killed, elections turned into farce and the economy looted of £200+billion. Both Siddiq and Ali knew this and had the platforms to speak from. And yet both chose deafening silence.

Let us not forget, Siddiq is Hasina’s beloved niece, and has publicly credited Hasina as her role model. On first being elected MP for Hampstead in 2015, Siddiq told Bengali-speaking journalists: “I learned everything about politics from Sheikh Hasina: social justice, how to campaign and how to reach out to the people.” Hasina watched proudly from the Commons public gallery as her niece made her maiden speech. On Facebook, Siddiq later hailed her aunt Hasina as a “strong female role model” for her own daughter. This same Hasina who is implicated by UNHCR in committing crimes against humanity against her own Bangladeshi electorate.

Ali’s case is equally damning. For eight years she served as Britain’s Trade Envoy to Bangladesh, enjoying direct access to all senior Awami League figures in Dhaka. She could have demanded human rights reforms, challenged political persecution, and spoken for those who could not speak for themselves. She did nothing. Not once in all those years did she publicly criticize Hasina’s authoritarian rule. In doing so, she helped manufacture political cover for South Asia’s most brutal and repressive regime.

British-Bangladeshis Should Disown Them

Veteran British politician George Galloway, who was MP of Rushanara Ali’s London Bethnal Green constituency between 2005–2010 and known to all British-Bangladeshis said:

“Rushanara Ali and Tulip Siddiq are a disgrace to the Labour Party -- itself sunk in scandal.

A homelessness minister who evicts her own tenants to squeeze still more filthy lucre out her property, while enjoying a ministerial salary and MPs salary and lavish expenses. And an Anti-corruption minister herself now on trial -- for corruption!  It's like a scarcely believable episode of TV political satire ‘The Thick of It’. Except this is a real life documentary rather than fiction.

Londoners deserve better than this.

Britain's wonderful Bangladeshi origin community deserves better than them.

Get Ali and Siddiq out of Parliament now.”

Ali and Siddiq will no doubt continue to appear at British-Bangladeshi community events, draping themselves in heritage and smiling for cameras when it suits them. But they have shown what that heritage means to them: a campaign tool, not a principle.

They will go down not as pioneers, but as proof that high office without integrity is a danger to those they claim to represent. By exploiting identity for votes, staying silent in the face of dictatorship, and betraying both their British constituents and 180 million Bangladeshis, Rushanara Ali and Tulip Siddiq have forfeited any moral claim to leadership.

The British-Bangladeshi community should not simply turn away from them, it should actively work to end their political careers and make them a permanent cautionary tale of what happens when trust is abused. The message must be clear: they cannot trade on identity while trampling on values and expect to survive in public office.