Hasina’s shadow over her niece’s career, a Musk tirade and trad wives

Sheikh Hasina’s shadow over her niece’s political career

For Sheikh Hasina’s extended family in Britain, the new year has got off to a rocky start even as she herself continues to face an uncertain future amid mounting pressure on New Delhi to extradite her to Dhaka.

Her favourite niece Tulip Siddiq, who was a minister in the Labour government, has been forced to resign over claims that she has benefited from her links to some of her aunt’s allegedly dodgy associates. Yes, the same niece Hasina had planned to stay with in London after fleeing Bangladesh last August.

An official investigation found that her family’s links with the ousted Bangladeshi regime exposed the government to “reputational risks”.

More specifically, the row centres on Siddiq’s use of several upmarket London properties bought by Hasina’s alleged proxies with money laundered out of Bangladesh during her regime.

Siddiq and her family live in a £2.1-million home owned by Abdul Karim Nazim, an official of the London arm of the Awami League. She also rents out a property bought by Abdul Motalif, a property developer with links to her aunt’s regime. It was worth £195,000 in 2001 and given to her in 2004, according to media reports.

Her sister Azmina was reportedly given a £650,000 property by one of their aunt’s advisers.

The controversy had been simmering for weeks but the tipping point came after Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim administration, joined the chorus for Siddiq’s resignation, saying that buying homes with “stolen money” was “plain robbery”.

She has also been named in an investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission over claims that her family has embezzled £3.9 billion from infrastructure projects.

Siddiq has not denied using these properties, and claimed that she has “done nothing wrong”. Her decision to resign, she said, was to avoid distraction for the government.

But the ‘Siddiq saga’, as the Times put it in a bruising editorial, isn’t over yet, even as other investigations into wider allegations of corruption continue.

Elon Musk’s eccentric tirade against Britain

‘One of America’s most powerful men is planning to invade Britain,’ wrote New Statesman columnist Will Dunn recently.

And the name of the invader?

Elon Musk, the billionaire ‘tech bro’, who is currently best-known for his proximity to Donald Trump and proclivity for weaponising his social media platform X to attack those he doesn’t like.

His latest target was Britain, more specifically Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Among other things, he has said that “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”.

When a follower suggested Britain could become an American state, Musk agreed that this was “not a bad idea”.

The threat to invade followed days of posts in which Musk had called home minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” for not agreeing to order another inquiry into ‘grooming gangs’ involving men of Pakistani descent.

He also urged King Charles to dissolve the parliament and called for Starmer to be jailed.

Intriguingly, Musk seems obsessed with Britain — predicting that a ‘civil war’ in the UK is ‘inevitable’. He tweets regularly about British affairs — mostly in support of its far-right individuals and groups.

As the New Statesman piece put it: ‘To an ordinary person, this is eccentric. But in Musk’s world it makes sense.’

The ‘trad wife’ is back

Feminism? What feminism?

Apparently, the new generation of British women — the so-called Gen Z — is increasingly drawn towards the traditional roles their mothers and grandmothers fought to liberate themselves from.

Online sites promoting a stay-at-home lifestyle are booming. One such site run by an American actor and YouTube influencer, 23-year-old Brett Cooper, has 4 million subscribers.

Similar Instagram and TikTok channels are flourishing amid reports that — believe it or not — kitchen aprons and domestic washing-up products are selling out as the first post-feminist generation gets down to work.

In a new study by King’s College London, nearly 1 in 10 women ages 16–29 agreed with the statement that “feminism has done more harm than good”.

Well, well.

Diplomatic faux pas?

The outgoing US ambassador to Britain, Jane Hartley, has done the undiplomatic thing by criticising her own country on foreign soil and drawing unfavourable comparisons with the host nation.

In a newspaper interview, she said that while Britain had had three female prime ministers, America was still dragging its feet on the issue.

“Why can’t America elect a woman? I have wrestled with this. We have very powerful figures like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, the Senate has some very strong women… So, why can’t we make the jump? I’m baffled,” she said.

She also praised the Brits for their gun control laws.

“You guys are so right on gun control; your policy makes so much more sense. No one feels the need to be armed here. Somehow, we have gotten the narrative wrong in the US. Abortion is another area. I love that abortion is not political here,” she told the Times.

And, finally, former British foreign secretary Jack Straw is a regular churchgoer but refrained from talking about it in public throughout his career because, he said, “I always feel if somebody wears [faith] on their sleeve, you should feel for your wallet.”

Views are personal. Earlier editions of Hasan Suroor’s ‘London Diary’ may be read here.