Rushanara Ali (Bengali: রওশন আরা আলী; born 14 March 1975) is a British politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 2010 and as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Homelessness and Rough Sleeping since July 2024.[a] A member of the Labour Party, she was the first British Bangladeshi elected to Parliament.
Ali began her career as a research assistant to Michael Young, working on a project which paved the way for the establishment of Tower Hamlets Summer University, offering independent learning programmes for young people aged 11–25. She helped to develop "Language Line", a national telephone interpreting service in over 100 languages. Between 1997 and 1999 she was parliamentary assistant to Oona King, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.[3]
Ali worked on human rights issues at the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2001. Prior to this, she was a research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) focussing on anti-discrimination issues from 1999 to 2002. From 2002 to 2005, she worked in the community cohesion unit at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office, leading a work programme to mobilise local and national agencies in the aftermath of the 2001 riots in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham, to prevent further conflict and unrest, challenging central Government to provide appropriate support to these areas.[4]
In March 2009, Ali was listed by The Guardian as one of the most powerful Muslim women in Britain.[13]
Parliamentary career
Ali at the Forum Libération de Grenoble in February 2013
In April 2007, Ali was chosen as the Labour Party's prospective Parliamentary candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow. In May 2010, she was elected as a Member of Parliament with a majority of 11,574 votes.[14] She is the first person of Bangladeshi origin to have been elected to the House of Commons,[15] and along with Shabana Mahmood and Yasmin Qureshi, became one of the United Kingdom's first female Muslim MPs.[16][17]
In February 2013, Ali voted in favour of the Same Sex Marriage Bill.[18] This drew support from pro-LGBT activists such as Peter Tatchell, but condemnation from religious figures such as the Imams of mosques in Tooting and Bradford.[18][19] She would later defend a constituent who alleged he was a victim of homophobichate crime after his neighbours sang songs at him with the words "queer", "fairy" and "fag", calling for the case to be reconsidered in a letter to the Crown Prosecution Service.[20]
Ali served as Shadow Minister of State for International Development from October 2010 to October 2013.[22] In the October 2013 Labour frontbench reshuffle, Ali was appointed Shadow Minister of State for Education.[23]
On 26 September 2014, she resigned from the Shadow Education team to abstain on the Coalition government's House of Commons motion permitting military action against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Iraq.[24] In a letter to the leader of the party Ed Miliband, she wrote "I appreciate the sincerity of members of parliament from all sides of the House who today support military action against ISIL. I know that British Muslims stand united in the total condemnation of the murders that ISIL have committed. However, there is a genuine belief in Muslim and non-Muslim communities that military action will only create further bloodshed and further pain for the people of Iraq."
Ali also told Miliband that she remained totally committed to his leadership and was looking forward to his becoming the prime minister in next eight months' time. In his return letter to Ali, Miliband praised her as 'someone with great ability and talent'. Regretting her departure from the frontbench team, the Labour leader added that he accepted the resignation with due respect to her decision.[25][26]
In March 2018, Ali received a suspicious package containing an anti-Islamic letter and sticky liquid.[40] The substance was later found to be harmless. Similar packages were received by fellow Labour MPs Mohammad Yasin, Rupa Huq and Afzal Khan.[41][42]
In October 2018, Ali signed the 'MPs not border guards' pledge, committing to not report constituents to the Home Office for immigration enforcement.[43]
As of 2019, Ali is part of the executive committee of the British-American Project.[44] In December 2019, in the general election, Ali retained her seat with an increased majority of 37,524.
In March 2020, Ali was one of 76 Labour MPs to urge that the government grant recourse to public funds for all migrants in the UK regardless of their legal status.[45]
In March 2021, a 42-year-old man was sentenced after orchestrating an 18-month hate campaign against Ali which included death threats.[47]
In November 2022, as a serving MP, Ali received £10,000 for 32 hours of work to represent a privately funded "Commission of Inquiry" to investigate the Kazakhstan Government and the detention of Zhanbolat Mamay.[48] In a press conference on 20 January 2023, Bindmans LLP, the project manager, refused to disclose the name of their client but revealed it was a Kazakhstan citizen or citizens.[49]
While Ali did issue a statement calling for a humanitarian ceasefire during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war,[51] she came under significant criticism from constituents for not attending an immediate ceasefire vote in November 2023. [52] This angered her constituents, leading to protests in front of her office including a protest from local school students.[52][53]
During the 2024 general election, she saw her 37,000-majority reduced to 1,700 and thus only narrowly avoided losing her seat to independent candidate Ajmal Masroor, who was running on a pro-Palestine platform.[55][56]
Ministerial career (2024–present)
After Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, Ali was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Building Safety and Homelessness in the Starmer ministry.[57][58]
On 19 October 2024, Ali relinquished her portfolio of Building Safety after survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire called for her resignation due to Ali attending a conference sponsored by Saint-Gobain, a company that was criticised by the inquiry into the fire.[59] She retained her ministerial role in the department with responsibility for homelessness and rough sleeping.[60]
