British lawmaker says she was sacked due to her Muslim faith

LONDON: A British lawmaker has said she was fired from a ministerial job in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government partly because her Muslim faith was making colleagues uncomfortable.

Nusrat Ghani, 49, who lost her job as a junior transport minister in February 2020, told a British paper she was told by a “whip” – an enforcer of parliamentary discipline – that her “Muslimness” had been raised as an issue in her sacking.

The former transport minister also said she was told there were concerns she was not doing enough to defend the Conservatives against allegations of Islamaphobia.

There was no response to her comments from Downing Street office. However, Mark Spencer, the government’s chief whip, said he was the person at the centre of Ghani’s allegations. “These accusations are completely false and I consider them to be defamatory,” he said on Twitter. “I have never used those words attributed to me.”

Ghani’s remarks come after one of her Conservative colleagues said he would meet police to discuss accusations that government whips had attempted to “blackmail” lawmakers suspected of trying to force Johnson from office over public anger about parties held at his Downing Street office during COVID lockdowns. The scandals have drained public support from both Johnson personally and his party, presenting him with the most serious crisis of his premiership.

Ms Ghani said she spoke to party whips after losing her ministerial role in February 2020 and “asked what the thinking was behind the decision to fire me and what the mood music was when my name was mentioned in No 10 concerning the reshuffle”.

“I was told that at the reshuffle meeting in Downing Street that ‘Muslimness’ was raised as an ‘issue’, that my ‘Muslim women minister’ status was making colleagues uncomfortable,” the paper quoted Ghani, Britain’s first female Muslim minister, as saying. “I will not pretend that this hasn’t shaken my faith in the party and I have at times seriously considered whether to continue as an MP (member of parliament).”

In his response, Spencer said Ghani had declined to put the matter to a formal internal investigation when she first raised the issue last March. The Conservative Party has previously faced accusations of Islamophobia, and a report in May last year criticised it over how it dealt with complaints of discrimination against Muslims.

The report also led Johnson to issue a qualified apology for any offence caused by his past remarks about Islam, including a newspaper column in which he referred to women wearing burqas as “going around looking like letterboxes”.

She told the newspaper it was like “being punched in the stomach” and made her feel “humiliated and powerless”. Her claims brought immediate condemnation from Conservative MPs and opposition parties alike, with demands for an inquiry.

The main opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer said the Conservatives must investigate Ghani’s account immediately. “This is shocking to read,” he said on Twitter.