Tulip Siddiq has resigned.

Oh I love all you DM readers and believers!
As another poster said, those of you wanting Reform please persuade me in some way as I have no idea what they offer me
TS did work to free Nasrin from Iran she should be remembered for that ! I cannot believe the bitchiness by many on this forum! Surely women are better than their lousy, nasty comments ???

MOnica I think you missed my point which wasn't specifically about TS and definitely not about Bangladesh. I was talking about you saying if any allegations are made, even with no proof, people should have to go. That seems dangerous to me and frankly unworkable.

theworriedwell, I think you are tryingto be perverse of assuming a naive innocence.

The immense corruption and opressionin the regime in Bangladesh that TS's aunt headed has been known and proven for at least a decade and there has been both photographic and other evidence to show how close TS was to her aunt and the regime. Being photographed in Russia with her aunt and Putin when a major deal connected with corruption is one.

Then there is all the murkiness that surrounds her property dealings in the UK.

Now TS may come out of this as proven to be as pure as driven snow, but as things are at the moment there is substantial evidence that, even if not doing anything corrupt herself, or accepting bribes, she must have been cognisant of what was happening around her.

As I have already said. In some cases accusations are made that are very quickly proven without basis, in others, and this is one, in which case the person involved should stand down as soon as possible until the matter has been resolved.

TS's hanging on has done her and her party great damage. It has made the case front age news with all the accusations dragged acrosss the headlines and led to more doubts being raised about the competence of Labour party leadership, the last thing they need at the moment. It means that accusations against her have also become headline news and more and more potentially corrobarative evidence is headlined every day.

This must cast doubt on her personal commitment to Labour party principles, when she is so close to a dictator and seems to have benefitted from it.

Now, if she had gone whe the accusations were first made the issue would probably have died down by now.

The question of the judgement of those who sent her to the Treasury and then put her at the head of the anti-corruption drive is certainly an issue - and an appointment to be secretary of a different department would also have muted the complaints.

That is if you think accusations of being too close to a corrupt governemnt regime run by a close relative, are not an issue of concern. I think they are.

All I know about Tulip is that she worked tirelessly to get Nazanin released from prison and I’ve always been impressed with her when she speaks in parliament. As has been pointed out, she didn’t break the ministerial code. And that when Badenoch was speaking about her in parliament today she was sitting next to Patel who has, I believe, been removed from office a couple of times for misdemeanours and has been accused of bullying.

Freya5

Cossy

It’s not great that ANY MP should be corrupt and I hope Tulip is rightly penalised if she is guilty.

We, as voters, deserve better.

There are sadly corrupt people and MPs across the entire political spectrum.

Shame it has to be used in this context to yet again bash the Labour Party.

They deserve the bashing, two people, fraud, and possible corruption. According to Starmer, who made a huge outcry on Sky News in 2023 re Dominic Raab, saying he should have been sacked. Well here we are, not only with a PM defending, and not sacking a possible corrupt politician, who should never have been put into that role for starters, with her family history, but being the hypocrite in front of the world that we know he is. Now in her place a woman Reynolds who is desperately in thrall to China, a few days after Reeves came back from grovelling to them. They think we are all as blinkered as there voters.

"Their".

Cossy

It’s not great that ANY MP should be corrupt and I hope Tulip is rightly penalised if she is guilty.

We, as voters, deserve better.

There are sadly corrupt people and MPs across the entire political spectrum.

Shame it has to be used in this context to yet again bash the Labour Party.

They deserve the bashing, two people, fraud, and possible corruption. According to Starmer, who made a huge outcry on Sky News in 2023 re Dominic Raab, saying he should have been sacked. Well here we are, not only with a PM defending, and not sacking a possible corrupt politician, who should never have been put into that role for starters, with her family history, but being the hypocrite in front of the world that we know he is. Now in her place a woman Reynolds who is desperately in thrall to China, a few days after Reeves came back from grovelling to them. They think we are all as blinkered as there voters.

But you are not a Secretary of State.
There are also some rather suspect property arrangements, not properly declared.

M0nica

*theworriedwell*. Any accusation has to have something to support it, and for many people ther willsimply be nos substance to the allegataions - and we see that happening in other fields, where accusations are made or a news item written, but verification soon show the accusation lacks substane, but in Tulip Siddiqus case, she has very close family links with the woman who was Prrime Minister of Bangladesh, but ran the county like a dictator. Rumours of extensive corruption have wrapped their way round her and her extended family and supporters for at least the last decade. Everything we have seen recently has shown how far Ms Siddiqu, was close to her aunt and her political life.

The real mistake lies with whoever gave her this responisbility within the Treasury, and even who made her a Secretary to the Treasury in the first place. It must have been well known how close her relationship with her family and her aunt who rules with out opposition was. If those security clearing Ministers for their jobs did not know they should be sacked.

she should have been appointed to be Secretary in a Ministry that was merely a spending ministry, where accusations like these would be less damaging.

I think when you said, Anyone in that particular post has to be the purest of the pure, and if accused, even incorrectly, should immediately step down it made me wonder how the media could use this.

You've now said there has to be something to support it which does change it a little. Does just being related to someone provide enough support or more than that? I mean I've got a nephew who is a wrong'un but it is nothing to do with me.

Oh dear! Starmer and his advisers put their foot in it by appointing Ms Siddiq to the treasury in that capacity.
I am trying to feel support for thus government. I just hope that they become more politically adroit, because I do agree with their aims and want them to succeed.
Tulip Siddiq should have realised that her position in the treasury would make her vulnerable to media slurs. And she should have resigned promptly.

Just read the journalist story on her background, which highlights how far she went to bury this story. She threatened him with legal action if he published his findings. Who doesn’t remember how they obtained a property. Her disdain for the British public knows no bounds

I had no idea, before I lived in countries where corruption was simply part of the furniture, so to speak - the way things/business deals were done - how it could touch almost every aspect of everyday life.

Quite a few of my colleagues were Indian, so I was naively shocked when one of them (an ordinary employee, not very well paid) told me that he needed to send money to his wife for a particular fairly urgent purpose, but would have to add the ‘commission’ for whoever handed it over at the other end.

I didn’t quite understand, so asked what he meant.
With a matter of fact sort of shrug, he said that the clerk in whichever office it was, would deduce that his wife needed the money in a hurry, so ‘of course’ there would be e.g. 10% to pay before he’d hand it over.

That was my first introduction to ‘everyday’ corruption, but I later heard of many more.
(This was in the 1970s BTW)

Good. Her position had become untenable. I have found it very interesting reading about the Bangladeshi oligarchs living in this country. I wonder if they do anything to help their own poor compatriots.

petra

Witsend
There is a piece in the DM today written by a journalist of Bangladesh origin.
He has tracked her for years. I would imagine he’s cock-a- hoop. 😂

I read that article petra. Well done that journalist for continuing to dig deep even when as he said “Tulip lied”.

Who?

Ilovedogs22

I agree with most of you Gransnetters but just to take chat down to basic tat level for a mo!
I cannot stand her blooming smug, slimy, greasy, sanctimonious, smug (again) face!!!
She really is the epitomy of an over-confident, irritating piece of work. Phhuuh! 🥴

Beware the wide smile from a politician

TerriBull

It does seem a massive own goal, all of this must have been apparent before she was appointed anti Corruption Minister. Bloody hell! is having a lack of foresight some sort of prerequisite for going into politics these days, the more they're lacking in it, the higher they rise, it seems.

They live in their own bubble. Unfortunately for them we have the free Press and SM. I sometimes wonder how Gladstone or Disraeli would have fared on TikTok.

TerriBull

It does seem a massive own goal, all of this must have been apparent before she was appointed anti Corruption Minister. Bloody hell! is having a lack of foresight some sort of prerequisite for going into politics these days, the more they're lacking in it, the higher they rise, it seems.

It's even worse than the Tories putting Nadhim Zahawi in charge of the Treasury who were investigating his dodgy dealings since arriving from Egypt as a non-English speaking immigrant 20 years earlier. He got away with a £5m fine for "careless accounting"

I find the fact she doesn't know who owns her London flat is very suspicious.

I agree with most of you Gransnetters but just to take chat down to basic tat level for a mo!
I cannot stand her blooming smug, slimy, greasy, sanctimonious, smug (again) face!!!
She really is the epitomy of an over-confident, irritating piece of work. Phhuuh! 🥴

On the other hand by appointing as minister someone whose own extended family are so deeply mired in corruption, at least she has an inside line to how it is done and who is doing it that could have been useful in her role as minister against corruption.

It does seem a massive own goal, all of this must have been apparent before she was appointed anti Corruption Minister. Bloody hell! is having a lack of foresight some sort of prerequisite for going into politics these days, the more they're lacking in it, the higher they rise, it seems.

Witsend
There is a piece in the DM today written by a journalist of Bangladesh origin.
He has tracked her for years. I would imagine he’s cock-a- hoop. 😂

…and yet Starmer chose to make her an anti corruption minister , what possessed him? I often think that once in power a sort of madness comes over them.

Oddly enough we took an Uber the other day, and the driver (of Bangladeshi origin) commented that a house very near us was lived in not long ago by someone fairly high up within the Bangladeshi hierarchy.

That led him to talk of Tulip Siddiq, and to carry on during the entire 20 minute journey, speaking very viscerally about the eye-watering levels of corruption and the vast sums of money that had been stolen from what is a very poor country.

We were left in no doubt as to how he felt about it all!

Beeches

FGT you’ve mentioned somewhere that you’d like Reform in power and so what is it that you think they’d do to improve your life or the future of the country? I’m so intrigued to know why you think they’d benefit you or anyone else?

Deflection.

What has that to do with Tulip Siddiq's resignation?