The plaudits have been rolling in for Naushabah Khan, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Rochester and Strood, launched into the national limelight this autumn as the seat’s Conservative member of parliament switched allegiance to the United Kingdom Independence party. The move prompted a by-election as he followed his new party teammate Douglas Carswell in standing down to contest the seat in new colours.
But it is Khan who has stood out, and she has won praise from some unlikely quarters. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle, not a known fan of the Labour party, described her as ‘unruffled, articulate, competent’, while another pundit, commentating on a recent televised hustings, argued, that Khan ‘is an excellent candidate. She speaks like something resembling a normal human, comes across as calm and reasonable and knows her facts. She was easily the most impressive person on stage.’
Our candidate took time out of the helter-skelter by-election whirl to speak to us.
Having grown up in Medway, Khan spent three years away at Birmingham University before returning to the area and, like many fellow residents, commutes into London each day. And it is clear that representing this area in particular means a lot to her – and getting Medway represented within Labour too, not least at a time when the party holds no seats in Kent. ‘I was brought up here, and for me, to be able to represent the area that I care about so passionately would be absolutely fantastic. I still think that politics is a way to influence change’.
Indeed, it was the chance to make change happen by standing up to the British National party in Birmingham that first led her into Labour politics. Her battle now with Ukip is all the more appropriate; that journey seems to have come almost full circle, and all the more so once the campaign kicked off and Britain First, an ugly successor to the ugly BNP, rode into town. ‘They’ve done a march down our high street … They came out here with their flags and their union jacks, shouting and calling Muslims paedophiles. That’s the things we have seen, that I have never seen my whole life growing up here and for me that is really worrying because I don’t feel that the generation that has seen stuff like that – not necessarily in Medway – and the fact that that kind of behaviour is becoming more common and [seen as] as acceptable is disgusting’.
The rise of Ukip is not unrelated, she argues: ‘There must be a link with how Ukip has spent so much time blaming immigrants for things and creating division in our communities. [Britain First’s actions are] playing one group of people off against another group of people. It’s not the country that I grew up in and it’s not the area that I grew up in.’
A phrase like ‘It’s not the country I grew up in’ is something the far-right and populist right might feel to be their own. Khan directly takes this on with a vision of a country characterised by the values of tolerance and acceptance, not division and exclusion. Her own background looms large in her mind. ‘I grew up with immigrant parents. Both of my parents are Indian but my mother grew up in Kenya until she was 11; dad came here in the 1980s. They both work really hard – my mum now works in the MoD and my dad works in a small business in Strood. They brought me up saying, “This is your country and be proud of it”.’
Khan, moreover, tells a story of immigration to Britain which is not heard often enough, but which is one which is compelling in its reminder of the power the idea of Britishness held for those who moved here from parts of the former British empire. In doing so she again contests an interpretation of history that Ukip might prefer, one which seeks to return the country to a golden age when Britannia ruled the waves but forgets the interconnectedness that empire brought. ‘I think people just assume that if you are an immigrant you come over here and you don’t give back. But actually, my mum, one of the reasons she came to England … was because they were born British under a British empire. And that is a history that this country has, and we can’t move away from it, and it’s been forgotten. Because now we when we talk about it we only talk about people coming here in an exploitative way.’
Khan has been applauded for her defence of the role of immigration in the United Kingdom, and her stance may well chime more closely with most people than many have assumed, and she is clear that ‘we need to start making a positive case for immigration and what immigration does for this country.’
She recollects a time when immigration was on the rise – indeed, even more so than it is currently – and when Labour was on the verge of seizing power. The trick was to tell a story of hope. ‘I know in 1997 when Blair came to power how things changed. The story was about hope. For a lot of people that doesn’t seem unique, but as a result of that I was able to be the first person in my family to go to university, which I don’t think would have been possible without the support that a Labour government gave to my parents. It was that feeling that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from you can achieve something. You can reach your aspirations. That was one of my motivations and probably why I’m Labour.’
The hope embodied by a Labour victory is not just a personal matter, but something central to Labour winning specifically in Rochester and Strood. ‘When it comes to elections, [voters] will look for the party who can offer them a sense of hope and aspiration down here. We need to really make sure we are selling ourselves as the party of hope … We need to be showing people that we still believe in those fundamental things, that it doesn’t matter what your background is.’
This is especially true for Generation Y, those born between 1980 and the mid-1990s, to which she belongs, but all the more so for those born later, whose prospects now appear immeasurably reduced in the wake of austerity. ‘Part of the issue is [that] our generation has benefitted from a Labour government, did economically well and [was] able to reach their aspirations, go to university and did do better than their parents did. A lot of people see that in reverse now’.
What would Khan do if she got into parliament and won in the private members’ bill ballot? Her concern again focuses on the next generation.
‘I [would] want to look at transport and specifically transport for under-19s … There aren’t many places that offer free transport for under-19s who travel on the buses. Here in the constituency, when your child turns 16 they then become an adult and have to pay an adult fare and when they are going to training, education, apprenticeships or whatever it is a real strain on the family’. Quizzed on whether Labour’s plans for greater devolution would assist in this, Khan agrees but adds, ‘It shouldn’t just be about Medway because this is something that affects families right across the country.’
The outcome of Thursday’s by-election could itself affect the whole country. Attention may be on Ukip’s Mark Reckless, but there is only one candidate whose standing has risen in the course of the Rochester and Strood by-election.
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Photo: BBC