The UK government’s homelessness minister resigned over swirling claims that she evicted tenants from a property she owns before hiking the rent.
Britain’s Labour government faces a continuing irony crisis after losing another minister accused of doing what they’d been selected to fight. Bangladesh-born homelessness minister Rushanara Ali [top, left], the Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Stepney, stepped down from her role on Thursday, citing recent news stories that “will be a distraction from the ambitious work of the government”.
The resignation came, as The Daily Telegraph reported, amid claims that Ali had evicted four tenants from a home she owns in London last year at short notice. Shortly after they had moved out, the property was put back on the market at a much higher price. Crucially, this exact practice of evicted tenants to find new, higher-paying ones is set to be outlawed by a new law being introduced by the Labour government to improve the rights of renters.
It is not, however, illegal quite yet. Ali said in her resignation letter: “I wanted to make clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements. I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously”.
Short-term evictions are cited by the government’s own communications as increasing the “risk of homelessness”, precisely the social ill Ali was ostensibly in ministerial office to tackle. As noted by The Times, the hypocrisy scandal is politically poisonous for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer [top, middle], for whom one of his main attack lines against the Conservative Party he defeated at the election last year was that they are self-enriching hypocrites.
Until now, the government policy Ali was perhaps best known for was reducing the voting age for UK elections from the age of 18 — the age of legal majority — to 16.
The resignation of Ali amid this scandal follows by just days the news that the Labour government’s anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq [top, right] will indeed be facing trial in her ancestral Bangladesh, where her grandfather was President and Prime Minister in the 1970s and her aunt was its longest-serving Prime Minister until being ousted in a coup last year.
Siddiq resigned in January this year as allegations of graft were being made and followed years of claims about her use of various expensive London properties gifted or owned by her aunt’s political allies. As reported by the BBC last week, erstwhile anti-corruption minister Siddiq will be facing trial for corruption in Bangladesh over illegally receiving land in the country next week.
Channel 4 notes it is alleged that members of Siddiq’s family embezzled “just under four billion pounds” ($5.2bn) from government projects in Bangladesh.
If she declines to attend the court the case will be heard in her absence. The broadcaster notes Siddiq’s lawyers have dismissed the investigation as “politically motivated”.
Other notable resignations from the UK’s Labour-led government since it took power last year include transport minister Louise Haigh who resigned after an undisclosed criminal conviction came to light and health minister Andrew Gwynne who said he hoped a constituent who didn’t support him would die.
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