Tulip Siddiq

Tulip Siddiq has been Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate since 2015. Born in London in September 1982 and educated at King's College London, she is a member of the founding family of Bangladesh: her maternal grandfather was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's founder, first President and second Prime Minister, and her aunt is Sheikh Hasina, its longest serving Prime Minister, overthrown in August 2024 and now in exile. That is a dynasty of a nation state, not merely "a family connection to Sheikh Hasina", and it sits at the centre of the scandal that ended her ministerial career.

She was appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, the minister responsible for financial services and anti corruption policy, on 5 July 2024, and resigned just over six months later, on 14 January 2025, replaced by Emma Reynolds. The trigger was property. A King's Cross flat was transferred to her in 2004 from a developer linked to her family's Awami League without her paying for it, and she signed the Land Registry transfer for the gift; in 2022 she denied it was a gift and threatened a newspaper with legal action, before Labour sources confirmed it had been gifted by a developer with alleged links to Hasina's government. The Prime Minister's adviser Sir Laurie Magnus found she had "remained under the impression that her parents had given the flat to her" and that the public had been "inadvertently misled about the identity of the donor". She had also lived until 2018 in a Hampstead flat given to her sister in 2009 by a lawyer who represented the Hasina administration. Sir Laurie found no breach of the Ministerial Code but suggested the PM consider stripping some of her responsibilities.

The Bangladesh legal position has since escalated sharply. She has been sentenced in absentia to a total of six years in jail across three separate corruption cases involving her family, and a Bangladesh court has ordered authorities to seek an Interpol Red Notice for her arrest over a private real estate project. She rejects the convictions as politically motivated.

She had earlier served as a Camden councillor and held shadow Treasury and Education briefs. She was elected again in 2024 with 23,432 votes (48.3 per cent) and a majority of 14,970 (30.9 per cent).