Tulip Siddiq: ‘Go to as many strip clubs as you want — I really don’t care. Are you serving our people?’

Campaigning is fierce in the London ultramarginal of Hampstead and Kilburn. As the mercury rises, Rosamund Urwin hits the blossom-lined streets with the very well-connected Labour candidate
Life in the marginal: from left, actor Richard Wilson, author Kathy Lette, writer Bonnie Greer, candidate Tulip Siddiq, comedian Eddie Izzard, actors Emma Thompson and husband Greg Wise are all out for Labour in Hampstead and Kilburn (Picture: Paul Dallim
Rosamund Urwin15 April 2015

Tulip Siddiq once challenged Vladmir Putin over his record on gay rights. The Labour candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn had travelled to Moscow in 2013 to see her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladesh Prime Minister. Hasina took Siddiq to a meeting with Putin.

“You have the man in front of you, why wouldn’t you ask for his stance on the treatment of LGBT people in Russia?” the fast-talking 32-year-old asks. “He avoided the question. But I can tell my grandchildren I did it.”

Siddiq tells me this because a photograph was published of her and Putin at the weekend, amid accusations she was somehow involved in a Russia-Bangladesh arms deal. Siddiq says it’s nonsense. “I wasn’t part of my aunt’s delegation. I went because I don’t get to see her much. [At the] meeting, Putin said: ‘Is your family here? I’d like a picture.’ In retrospect, I should have thought about how it looked. I think Putin would wonder: ‘Who is this random girl I am meant to be making arms deals with?’”

The story suggests the fight for Hampstead and Kilburn is getting dirty. Siddiq is defending a majority of just 42 in the seat formerly held by Glenda Jackson. It’s the top Tory target. Another revelation from the weekend was that the Lib-Dem candidate, Maajid Nawaz, had visited a strip club. A video was released of him with a dancer; Nawaz replied that he was on his fiancée-approved stag party.

“It’s gutter politics,” she says. “Go to as many strip clubs as you want. Have as many wives as you want — I really don’t care. Are you going to serve our people or not?”

I meet Siddiq, who has lived in the constituency for 17 years, at her campaign HQ on Kilburn High Road. The shop front gleams, but inside is predictably chaotic. Piles of leaflets cover the floor. Volunteers — including Siddiq’s husband, Christian Percy, who has taken five months off work to help — trample in holding Labour placards. She’s Tigger-esque in enthusiasm. No campaign fatigue? “Not at all. I love it. This is what I live for.”

She’s certainly good at it. Siddiq uses tactics she learned working on the 2008 Obama campaign, including putting volunteers at the forefront and setting out in emails what small donations will buy (she receives no funding from party HQ as this is a Labour-held seat).

Well-connected: Tulip Siddiq (Picture: Daniel Hambury)

She also has a knack for garnering attention. When Boris Johnson visited the constituency last week, Siddiq photobombed him, banner in hand: “I heard that the Tories were really angry because the whole coverage in the local press had us in it.”

She has drawn on the power of celebrity herself. Her supporters include Emma Thompson, Robert Webb and Alan Davies, who opened her office. At the weekend, Eddie Izzard went campaigning with her in Queen’s Park. “He came in full drag: tight-fitting suit, full make-up, big heels. I never wear heels for campaigning even though I’m 5ft. Every other person asked us for a selfie.”

So Izzard for London Mayor come 2020? “He actually said he either wants to be London Mayor or a Labour MP.”

Another supporter is Richard Wilson, who recently posed with a banner that said “Proud to be a Hampstead socialist”. It was an attempt to address the old swipe at wealthy Labour voters. “Why is Hampstead socialist a dirty term? It’s a lazy argument that just because you’re affluent, you don’t care about wider society. I’d rather be a Hampstead socialist than not a socialist. And I’d rather be a Hampstead socialist than an Etonian.”

Isn’t that criticising someone for a decision their parents made when they were 13? “You’re right,” she says, that rarest of political admissions. “It’s just a bit cheeky of Etonians to preach ‘Hampstead socialism’.”

Siddiq describes her own childhood as “unusual”. What she means is that she met Bill Clinton at the White House and had dinner with Nelson Mandela: “You think, ‘Is this person actually a human?’ I think I cried afterwards.”

But her family story is beset with tragedy. Her grandfather was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh who was assassinated alongside his three sons in a military coup. Only his two daughters — Siddiq’s mother and aunt — survived. “Everyone would say [she feigns awe] ‘That’s your grandfather’. I never even met him [so] I’d feel I didn’t deserve it. The reason I didn’t want to talk about it before is because it sounds boastful to say ‘I come from a family of prime ministers’. And I am trying to make it on my own.”

Her mother sought political asylum here, which is how she met Siddiq’s father, who was studying for a PhD. He later had a stroke and was left in a wheelchair and unable to speak for five years. “I joined the Labour Party because of the NHS; my father received really good treatment here.”

Siddiq worked for Amnesty, concentrating on the trafficking of women, then in political consultancy at Philip Gould Associates, and finally in Brunswick’s corporate and social responsibility division.

Siddiq’s aunt, who has herself survived 19 assassination attempts, gave Siddiq two pieces of advice for her political career. “Sacrifice is her main lesson: if you’re a public servant, the country is your family. And she taught me to be a bit rebellious, that if you don’t agree with the party whip, speak out.”

Siddiq opposes fracking, HS2 and says: “No one is drinking out of the immigration mug in my campaign HQ.” She even has some reservations about the mansion tax. In Hampstead & Kilburn, an estimated 3,000 homes are eligible.

“It’s not an ideal solution.” Siddiq picks her words carefully. “The name is quite divisive. If I had any say in party policy — which I don’t — I wouldn’t have named it the mansion tax. I don’t think a lot of these homes are mansions.”

'Tough man': Ed Balls

She even asked Ed Balls to make an exception for the asset-rich, cash-poor widow. “He’s a tough man so I had to put my case strongly. I said: ‘Would you consider putting some kind of concession for people who bought their property 40 or 50 years ago?’ I have to work on Ed Balls, and I have to get into Parliament to do it, but he did say that if you’re earning under £42,000 you can defer the charges until the sale of the property.”

However, Siddiq still believes the tax is needed to fund the NHS. “What are the Tories going to do to raise money for the NHS? I just want to hear one policy. Five hundred GP [surgeries] have closed under this government. In the Royal Free — a brilliant hospital — people were waiting four hours to be seen. Labour didn’t get everything right on the NHS, but things have never been as bad as they are now.”

Interestingly, she says the mansion tax has not come up at every husting. In Frognal, the most affluent area, it wasn’t mentioned; people asked about the EU, the NHS and inequality.

The number-one issue on the doorstep is more common housing issues. “People are queuing up outside my door for hours because they need to talk about their housing problems: overcrowding, rents, rogue landlords.”

She brands the bedroom tax a “disgusting” policy. “There are elderly Somali ladies who have been in their homes all their lives who say they are being sent to Kent. Their community is around here, their mosque is here.”

Siddiq feels embedded in the community ‘I keep running into people I used to babysit for, or who used to babysit me.” Although she’s already been tipped as a future PM (“I’m not even an MP yet!”), she says she simply wants to improve the area. “I live here too.”

THE VIEW FROM NORTH LONDON

Melvyn Bragg, broadcaster

I don’t want to think about what might happen if Tulip Siddiq doesn’t win. The Conservative candidate seems a decent bloke but I can’t see him being outstanding. He is not in the same league as Siddiq. As a Labour peer all I can say is I hope the Conservatives come a decent second.

Richard Wilson, actor

I dread to think what the Conservatives would do if they got in. It would be very bad, Conservatism doesn’t grab me at all. Hampstead & Kilburn needs a Labour MP to carry on the good work that Glenda Jackson did. Tulip Siddiq seems absolutely charming and very committed. I am a bit weary of foot but I went and said hello to her campaigning. Hampstead is a bit of a luvvie land but there are a lot of poor sections.

David Baddiel, actor

I have always voted Labour. This is because I once heard my MP, Glenda Jackson, a double Oscar winner, say on the radio that the highlight of her career was appearing on The Morecambe and Wise Show. I promised to myself there and then that I would always vote for her. If at any point Tulip Siddiq publicly states that “what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got” I will be putting a cross next to her name for the foreseeable future.

Greg Wise, actor (and husband of Emma Thompson)

I’m a profound fucking socialist and I believe that we are all in it together.

Alan Bennett, playwright

I’m more socialist certainly than New Labour – I’m very old Labour really (to the Guardian).

Bonnie Greer, author

Hampstead & Kilburn is a kind of microcosm of London, encompassing its wealth and poverty. I met Tulip when I was deputy chair of the British Museum. She brought young people in who would have never set foot in the place. A very good start for a future PM.

Kathy Lette, author

Hampstead has always been a leafy enclave of lefties, artists and bohemians. But it’s fast being taken over by wanker bankers and brain-dead footballers who only vote with their wallets. If a Conservative MP came in it would probably mean a privatisation of our schools, a closure of libraries, baby groups, rape crisis centres. Libraries are not a luxury but a necessity. Books are a cure for ignorance, boredom and poverty. Of course the Etonian-educated Tories don’t value public libraries, as they have their own — in the wings of their mansions.

Jonathan Miller, theatre director

‘That idiot Cameron!’ (to the Daily Mail).

David Hare, playwright

So mysterious, the Conservative Party. Shouldn’t it change its name? The word “Maoist” somewhere in there would be helpful (to The Spectator).

Susannah Butter (@susannahbutter)

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