IF MEMORY serves it would have been the General Election campaign of 2005. I was sitting in the living room of Dewsbury businessman Iftikhar Azam, discussing serious allegations about the activities of Labour’s MP-in-waiting, Shahid Malik. I recall this not out of fondness for multi-cultural nostalgia, but in the context of Reform UK’s determination to ban the Muslim face covering – the niqab.
Malik – currently on trial for a £6.3million covid fraud which he denies – would go on to be a junior Labour minister before he was disgraced in the MPs’ expenses scandal. Defeated Tory candidate Sayeeda Hussain-Warsi would instead be fast-tracked to Westminster by Michael Howard as Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury and later elevated to the first Cabinet of David Cameron.
