It’s rare that a world leader knows the name of a junior minister in the British government – let alone is calling for them to be sacked. Yet that is the feat achieved by Tulip Siddiq, No. 4 in Rachel Reeves’ Treasury team.
The anti-corruption minister is now facing calls to resign from an unlikely source after the leader of Bangladesh condemned the use of properties gifted to her and her family by its former regime. Muhammad Yunus told the Sunday Times today that the London properties used by Siddiq should be investigated and returned if she is found to have benefited from ‘plain robbery’.
Yunus has some authority here: he, after all, is the Nobel peace-prize winning economist who has led the interim government of Bangladesh since last year. Who did he replace in the role? None other than Tulip’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who, er, was removed in an uprising last year and stands accused of corruption and ‘crimes against humanity’. So much for that talk of a rules-based order. Hasina is among those said to have benefited from a nuclear energy deal she brokered with Russia. Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead & Highgate, denies benefiting from the deal, which is being examined by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission, or any other allegedly corrupt venture.
Yunus wants an apology from Siddiq. But with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch now warning of a diplomatic crisis, it seems less a matter of a simple ‘sorry’ and more a question of whether Tulip will still be a Labour MP in a week’s time. Tellingly, on the media round this morning, Science minister Peter Kyle refused to say that the government has full confidence in the Treasury minister, only that he has full confidence in the ongoing investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics watchdog.
An early winner of the 2025 sack race perhaps?
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