The resignation this week of yet another minister from Keir Starmer’s six-month-old government has brought renewed scrutiny of the Labour prime minister’s political judgment, say his critics in Westminster, including some in his own party.
Tulip Siddiq, who quit as a junior treasury minister after being named in a Bangladesh corruption investigation, is the second high-flying woman to quit Starmer’s government in three months. Lou Haigh quit as transport secretary in November after the revelation of a historic brush with the law.
The resignation of Siddiq, however, may be a harder one for Starmer to swallow. She is known to be politically and personally close to the prime minister, far more so than the more outspoken Haigh, who was seen as being to the left of Starmer and had her own nascent power base in Labour.
Siddiq’s Hampstead and Highgate constituency is also next door to Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras base in north London. She was seen as being among a coterie of MPs that are the closest thing to Starmerites in the Labour parliamentary party.
The prime minister’s critics believe this perceived closeness may be why he made what, in hindsight, looks like an error by appointing Siddiq as a minister with a brief to fight corruption.
London-born Siddiq’s extended family are part of a once-powerful Bangladeshi dynasty. Her grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the country’s first president but was assassinated in 1975 along with 16 members of his family.
His daughter and Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, later became Bangladesh’s prime minister and ran the country for 20 years in two separate periods, before she left office and entered exile to escape her political opponents last August, weeks after her niece joined the UK government.
The new Bangladesh government has since been investigating corruption allegations against Hasina and other members of the family. The scope of the investigation widened a few weeks ago to examine the transfer of properties in London to Siddiq by allies of her aunt.
The naming of Britain’s anti-corruption minister in a corruption investigation in Bangladesh led to calls for her to quit, but Starmer initially backed her. She referred herself to Downing Street’s ethics adviser, Laurie Magnus, who this week cleared her of any breach of the ministerial code.
Magnus highlighted, however, that her story on how she had acquired a flat in London had changed over time. He advised Starmer to “consider her ongoing responsibilities”.
Siddiq quit on Tuesday to avoid being a “distraction”. Starmer’s critics now want to know why he took the considerable political risk in the first place of appointing as corruption minister a friend who came from a family that had in the past faced corruption allegations in Bangladesh.
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