Dynasties bloom on foreign soil causing Tulip troubles

It’s not every day that you open your morning newsfeed and find a Labour MP from Hampstead and Highgate wanted by the authorities—not in Westminster, but in Dhaka. Tulip Siddiq, niece of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, darling of North London’s progressive set, and former Economic Secretary to the Treasury, now finds herself tangled in a legal mess that smells suspiciously like a cross-border family drama mixed with post-dictatorship retribution.

The Dhaka court has issued an arrest warrant for Siddiq, accusing her—along with over 50 others, including her mother Sheikh Rehana and brother, Radwan Mujib—of illegally acquiring land in the diplomatic zone of the city. Not a bad postcode to inherit, one might think, but the allegations are less about location and more about symbolism. Because if you’re wondering whether this is about one 7,200-square-foot plot, let me assure you: this is about political karma being served with a side of national catharsis.

To fully understand the implications, one must remember that Tulip Siddiq is not just a British MP. She is the British MP who embodies the soft power of the Bangladeshi ruling dynasty. A Western-educated, well-spoken, multicultural poster child for Labour’s diversity credentials, she has long enjoyed the privileges of both proximity to power and distance from the consequences of it. While Sheikh Hasina tightened her grip on Bangladesh’s democratic institutions with a precision that would make autocrats weep with envy, Siddiq remained largely unscathed in London, smiling her way through party conferences and ministerial posts. Her loyalty to her aunt was discreet but undeniable. She never bit the hand that buttered her family’s legacy.

But Bangladesh is no longer playing the same game. Hasina is gone. The July uprising sent her packing, the student protesters did what international observers and decades of diplomatic side-eyes could not. And now, the country’s interim regime—led, almost ironically, by Nobel laureate-turned-political-plumber Muhammad Yunus—is sifting through the mess. The Anti-Corruption Commission, armed with more paperwork than subtlety, is rolling out a full-fledged accountability crusade, and the Sheikh family is first on the chopping board.

The arrest warrant for Tulip, though legally impotent due to the lack of a UK-Bangladesh extradition treaty, is politically potent. It sends a message: the age of impunity is over. Or at least, that’s the tagline. In reality, this is a high-stakes theatre of justice, a performance calibrated for both domestic rage and international headlines. Whether it leads to actual convictions or fizzles out in bureaucratic ambiguity remains to be seen. But what’s certain is this: Tulip Siddiq is now a symbol—no longer just of multicultural Britain, but of the entangled mess that is globalised nepotism.

She, of course, denies everything, claims she never owned land in Bangladesh and that this is nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign. And perhaps it is. One doesn’t need to be a fan of the Sheikh dynasty to recognise that transitional justice often has the precision of a wrecking ball. But for someone who benefited from the very architecture of dynasty politics, Siddiq’s sudden plea for distance and neutrality feels, shall we say, rich.

In the UK, the response has been relatively muted. Some murmurs about reputational risk, a resignation from her Treasury role in January to keep the scandal from distracting the government—how very noble. But one wonders if the British establishment will ever truly grapple with the awkward implications of having democratically-elected officials with familial ties to regimes accused of human rights abuses.

What’s even more ironic is the timing. Britain, still recovering from its own post-Brexit identity crisis, now finds one of its MPs embroiled in a land-grabbing scandal halfway across the world. It’s the kind of storyline that writes itself: former colony issues arrest warrant for the niece of a former dictator, who just so happens to be an MP in the imperial centre. Somewhere, a postcolonial studies professor is having a field day.

But let’s not get too smug. Because this isn’t just about one MP or one dynasty. This is about the consequences of letting familial loyalty trump democratic responsibility. About how diasporic elites often benefit from the best of both worlds—power at home, prestige abroad—and are held accountable in neither. It’s about how justice, when delayed or denied for too long, begins to resemble vengeance when it finally arrives.

Tulip Siddiq might survive this scandal. She might stay comfortably nestled in her North London constituency, issuing carefully-worded statements about injustice and dignity. But her political sheen is tarnished. The narrative of the polished, progressive MP coexists now with headlines about shady land deals and family empires.

And as Bangladesh hurdles towards its own reckoning—balancing vengeance and virtue, justice and spectacle—Tulip’s story serves as a cautionary tale not just for politicians with powerful bloodlines, but for any democracy that lets power pass through the family tree like heirloom jewellery. Eventually, the tree is shaken. And sometimes, the flowers fall the hardest.

Barrister Noshin Nawal is an activist, feminist, and a columnist for The Daily Star. She can be reached at [email protected].

Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.