Four women of Bangladeshi origin win the UK election

Four British-Bangladeshi women representing the Labour Party have been elected to parliament despite another debacle for the party in the general election.

The four women - Tulip Siddiq, Rushanara Ali, Rupa Huq and Apsana Begum all won their respective seats with big margins on Friday.

Three of them- Tulip from Hampstead and Kilburn, Rushnara from Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green and Bow and Rupa from Ealing West were re-elected as MPs while Apsana won the Poplar and Limehouse constituency in her debut election.

Three other candidates of Bangladeshi origin - Merina Ahmed, Bablin Mallik and Dr Anowara Ali - lost the election races.

Bangabandhu’s granddaughter and Sheikh Rehana’s daughter Tulip held on to her Hampstead and Kilburn seat on Friday with a majority of 14,188 votes. She bagged 28,080 votes against her Conservative rival Johnny Luk to win the seat for a third time.  In 2017, Tulip had a majority of 15,560 votes.

Thank you Hampstead & Kilburn for electing me once again. Thanks to all my volunteers & my family. But devastated by our national results- sorry to lose such talented MPs. Tough times ahead, we have to work together. #ElectionNight pic.twitter.com/u1hBb4CLiy

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) December 13, 2019

 

Rushanara, the first British lawmaker of Bangladeshi descent, won her fourth election in a row with a majority of 37,524 votes. She won 44,052 of the 60,810 ballots cast - 72 per cent of the vote.

Rupa won the Ealing Central and Acton seat for Labour by a margin 13,300 votes. She secured 28,132 votes in her constituency of 75, 510 voters to finish ahead of Conservative candidate Julian Gallant. Rupa had won the seat with of 13,807 votes in the 2017 election.

I thank the voters of Ealing, Acton and Chiswick for placing their trust in me for the third time in four years. Gutted for good colleagues who will not be returning to Parliament and indeed for the nation which will be poorer for five more years of rightwing Tory rule and Brexit https://t.co/iYUaF2mJbk

— Rupa Huq (@RupaHuq) December 13, 2019

 

Newcomer Apsana, who completed her BA Hons in Politics from Queen Mary University, polled ahead of her Conservative Party rival by 28,080 votes to take the Poplar and Limehouse seat.

Anowara, the only Bangladeshi-origin candidate from the Conservative Party, lost the race for the Harrow West seat to Labour’s Gareth Thomas. She bagged 16,440 votes compared to her opponent’s 25, 132.