Apsana Begum MP has issued a statement saying the way in which she continues to be treated at the hands of Labour’s machine cannot go on.

“I am still waiting for the outcome of a Labour Party process in which I have engaged in good faith over the two and a half years (plus) regarding my ex-husband,” she says.

“The process has been extremely distressing and damaging to my health in and of itself – requiring pages and pages of extensive personal information about my life,” she adds. “I have felt gaslit and have continually expressed my serious concerns at the Labour Party complaints procedure and whether it is able to respond appropriately to domestic abuse.”

“I have had to cope with this alongside the heightened Islamophobic abuse, the death threats and risks to my safety,” says the MP, concluding: “The way in which I continue to be treated as a survivor of domestic abuse and the UK’s first and only hijab wearing MP cannot continue.”

Begum, who is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Abuse and Violence places her situation in the context of “unresolved issues regarding the treatment of Black and Asian people within the Labour Party.”

She also criticises “the illegitimate trigger process conducted whilst I was certified off sick in 2022” as “unjust, undemocratic and unacceptable.” Party officials approved the trigger ballot in her Poplar and Limehouse constituency despite the MP being signed off sick, following “a sustained campaign of misogynistic abuse and harassment” from both her ex-husband and members of her constituency party.

The trigger process was beset by further controversies. Apsana Begum’s  campaign team pointed out at least fifty procedural complaints that have been submitted to the Labour Party, “including allegations of intimidation, misuse of data, membership irregularities, fraud, and even bribery.” In fact, every meeting that took place as part of that proces has been the subject of complaints.

There are strong feelings that the trigger ballot was used for factional motives. Such ballots have been waived for more than a dozen MPs, including Tory defector Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury South.

An independent domestic violence expert warned Keir Starmer that Labour would be  complicit in Apsana Begum’s abuse if the process went ahead and recommended it be suspended. The advice was ignored.

Momentum Co-Chair Kate Dove, said: “The way that Apsana has been treated, as a survivor of domestic abuse and the first hijab-wearing MP, is appalling but unsurprising. It is clear that the Starmer leadership has been abusing the whip and Party processes for factional gain and that it is disproportionately black and brown women who are paying the price.

“Plainly, the lessons of the Forde Report have not been learned, either in terms of abuse of process or Labour’s ongoing failures on anti-black racism and Islamophobia. If it wants to avoid concerns about Party racism snowballing into a crisis, the Labour leadership should heed Apsana’s concerns, restore the whip to MPs suspended for political reasons and stop censoring pro-Palestinian voices within the Party.”

In an earlier interview with Novara Media, Apsana begum said she was being targeted “because I’m a socialist, because of my politics, because I’m a Muslim woman of Bangladeshi origin, and working class. They don’t want us to represent people that are like us in Parliament.”

Several other left wing MPs have been treated shabbily by the Party leadership. Andy McDonald and Kate Osamor have had the whip suspended because of entirely acceptable comments about Israel’s war on Gaza. Diane Abbott has been suspended for nine months following a poorly worded letter she sent to the Observer, for which she quickly apologised. And Jeremy Corbyn has been indefinitely suspended and told he cannot be a Labour candidate at the upcoming election, an unprecedented act of contempt towards a former leader and one that underlines Keir Starmer’s insecurity, indifference to the views of Party activists and lack of political principle or integrity – he said in his leadership election contest in 2020 that he would continue the work of his “friend” Jeremy Corbyn.

Diane Abbott hit out at her own treatment by the Party last year, saying: “As a Black woman, and someone on the left of the Labour Party, I have unfortunately been forced to reach the conclusion that I will not get a fair hearing from this Labour leadership.”

Grassroots Labour members have long been unimpressed by the leadership’s treatment of the Party’s left wing. As the general election approaches, others in the media will ask: if he treats his own activists so contemptuously, how will he treat the country if he becomes Prime Minister?

Image: Apsana Begum MP. Source: https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Members/4790/Portrait?cropType=ThreeFour. Author: David Woolfall, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.