Apsana Begum, MP for Poplar and Limehouse tells-all about her relationship with the Labour Party after a rocky year

After getting the whip withdrawn within just eighteen days of the election, Poplar and Limehouse Labour MP Apsana Begum is here to set the record straight.

Apsana Begum and I have arranged to speak on Zoom on the first anniversary of the Labour government. Begum is partway through a morning of constituency work, and fizzing with energy. I compliment her oversized glasses. She thanks me; they’re to block the light from long hours of staring at her computer screen. 

Begum has gained a reputation as a critic of the government, having lost the whip within a mere eighteen days of the election, when she voted for an amendment that would have scrapped the rule limiting child benefit payments to the first two children in a household. 

Analysis from the Child Poverty Action Group found that scrapping the cap would lift 350,000 children immediately out of poverty. Begum tells me that she felt compelled to vote with the amendment because Tower Hamlets has ‘one of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country’. 

She recalls her election in 2019, which she believes came about partly because of her campaigning ‘to save our local nurseries from being closed, and campaigning for more funding, for more central government funding for SEND children and SEND services locally. So for me, it was without question that I would stand up for young people, children and families who are experiencing poverty in our inner area.’ 

The Save Our Nurseries campaign she refers to successfully delayed the closure of four local authority-run nurseries- Overland, Mary Sambrook, John Smith, and Queen Mary- but all four sites have since closed.

The amendment on the two-child benefit cap failed, but the government held further votes on welfare issues, including the winter fuel payment, PIP, and Universal Credit. On both occasions, she voted against them. 

‘Politics needs to be there to serve people,’ she tells me. ‘I think people in this country want to see something very basic. They want to see their politicians do as they say and say as they do. Locally the feedback that I get from constituents is that I am doing that, you know, but there can be repercussions.’ 

In February, she learnt via a news report that, of the seven MPs who were suspended from the Labour Party at the same time as her, she and one other- Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South- would not have the whip restored, meaning she remains an independent MP. 

This has its advantages: it’s allowed her to campaign for a ceasefire and more aid for Gaza, and for the halting of UK weapons sales to Israel, something that she describes as a ‘call for humanity’. 

But it also means that she is a lone voice against a government with a historically large parliamentary majority. I’m curious as to whether she feels disempowered by this. 

Rumours abound that she would be an early defector to the Green Party if Zac Polanski wins the leadership; alternatively, Zarah Sultana has joined forces with Jeremy Corbyn to create a new coalition of independent MPs sitting to the left of the Labour Party. She’s coy when I ask her whether she’d consider joining either. 

‘People’ she says, ‘voted Labour because they voted to see change and change is what we promised as the Labour Party at the last general election and that’s what I’m advocating even within my party; to say, look, we promised change, we’ve got to deliver it now’.

The evening before we spoke, Keir Starmer suffered the biggest challenge of his government so far: dissent from his party looked set to derail the landmark Welfare Reform bill, so much so that ministers were forced to rewrite the bill while Liz Kendall, Minister for Work and Pensions, was on the floor of the Commons. One veteran Labour MP described it as an ‘absolute shambles’. 

I expect Begum to be vindicated: the leadership that has caused her so much hurt, forced to concede that their position on welfare went against that of the majority of their party. 

In fact, when we get on the call it hardly seems to have registered. Begum sees herself as a constituency MP. She can only spare fifteen minutes in the middle of a busy morning, but she packs so much into every breath that it hardly matters. 

Despite still identifying with the Labour Party, she is concerned that this government is perpetuating the austerity of its predecessor, which will harm Poplar and Limehouse residents like the disabled, children in poverty and the elderly person who wrote to her about having to use their savings to cover their fuel bill rather than buy a new washing machine. 

They’ll be worse off, she fears, at the end of this parliamentary term than they were at the beginning. So, for Begum, this year hasn’t been about party politics. It’s been about the same thing that her politics has always been about:

‘My vision is that I don’t think that people should have to suffer poverty in the UK, you know, it’s a simple thing. It’s a simple vision, yeah. I refuse [to accept] that we have poor people in society.’

When she makes statements like these, it’s easy to forget that Begum, fresh-faced and effusive in her blue light-blocking glasses, isn’t a political activist, but a seasoned MP. And for many of her constituents, it’s this no-frills conviction that gets to the heart of why they voted for a Labour MP at all.

If you liked this, read A night at the Tower Hamlets election count: a photographer’s view behind the scenes