The Hampstead & Kilburn MP is in many ways a remarkable figure, but centrists should still vote for Kirsty Allan
I didn’t vote for Tulip Siddiq in 2015 and I’ve regretted it ever since. I knew that the Tories had a poor candidate but I couldn’t entertain the thought of Ed Miliband as prime minister. The Tory Simon Marcus ran a cynical single-issue campaign on the mansion tax and contrived to lose narrowly against a huge national swing in his favour. He never seemed to match Tulip for energy or conviction and proved it by moving to Kent straight after the election to write articles comparing the EU to the Third Reich. Had he won, he would surely have been wiped out this time around in one of Britain’s most pro-Remain areas.
Still, he had a tough opponent. Tulip Siddiq’s life story could have been written for Hampstead & Kilburn, probably the most diverse constituency in Britain. She makes much of her local links and went to school here for a while but is what David Goodhart would call an ‘anywhere’ politician; the scion of a Bangladeshi political dynasty who grew up across five countries. As a young, secular Muslim with upper middle class values she appeals as much to Hampstead mums and Queens Park media-types as the first generation immigrants on the estates of South Kilburn.
She is also a principled person who puts her constituents first. I know this thanks to my involvement with a new local free school. We asked her to an event knowing that given the party line on education she had every reason to turn us down. But she came alone unstaffed and even posed for a pic in the local paper giving everyone a huge boost. Her record in parliament shows she has fought for issues that locals care about, including more funding for nurseries. And she resigned from her party’s front bench to vote against Article 50, a decision motivated at least as much by conviction as self-preservation.
Tulip enjoys a slim majority that will be made slimmer by defecting UKIP voters, but will also benefit from the pleasant but unremarkable campaign run by her Tory opponent, Claire Louise-Leyland, a remainer who has parroted Theresa May’s ‘strong and stable’ mantra but wants to talk about anything except Brexit. Any voter that as a consequence thinks our local Tories favour a sane exit from the EU should read about the company they keep and vote accordingly.
Knowledge of the facts and my previous mistakes make not voting for Tulip very hard but I know that Jeremy Corbyn’s acolytes, a small group of men that facilitated Brexit through inaction, would claim my vote. I like Jeremy as a person but can’t endorse his vision of a command economy where the preferences of millions of disparate individuals are decided by a bunch of Trotskyite ex-journalists.
She’s doesn’t have Tulip’s profile but I’m sure Kirsty Allan would make a great MP. She’s worked for the saner Lib Dems like Norman Lamb and Lynne Featherstone and made her name campaigning for same sex marriage. She’s also lived in Queens Park for 13 years, has an Italian partner and will fight for the rights of the hundreds of EU citizens that are our friends and neighbours.
In a national election marked by its polarities, our constituency is remarkable for the similarity of the three main candidates, all young professional women with moderately centrist views. But there is only one candidate who also represents a moderately centrist party, so I’m going to vote for Kirsty Allan and hope unrealistically that next time around she and Tulip Siddiq, who agree on almost every important issue, will be members of the same party.
