The Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons has revealed details of the discrimination she’s faced during her time in politics but has vowed not to be pushed out. In a wide-ranging interview with Gloria De Piero to be broadcast on GB News on Sunday, Nus Ghani, Conservative MP for Sussex Weald, claimed she had been removed from a position due to her belief in Islam.Asked if she believed that there is anti-Muslim prejudice in politics, she said: “Well, that happened to me. And the reality is that you can lose your job in politics for multiple reasons, right? I never expected to be told that my faith was an issue.”I’ve got a wonderful colleagues in my party. It came as a huge surprise. And then what unfolded was completely unnecessary. I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through that again. So for me, it was important that I challenged it.”
TRENDING
Stories
Videos
Your Say
She added: “But the reality is, I feel that if I constantly have to comment on it, it ends up defining me. And fundamentally it should be defining the people, the protagonists, who used their power at the time to try and diminish who I am. So the reality also is that I am still here, and I have continued with my career.”Having been a member of Parliament, there is a saying, ‘No good deed goes unpunished in politics’. For me, what happened was so abhorrent I did not want it to happen to another colleague ever again. And because I took a stand, I’m hoping that it won’t.”I also don’t think it was just about my faith. I think there’s an element of misogyny involved and an element that – there was a complete power imbalance. But I wasn’t going to let it pass. It’s now done, and the protagonist should be explaining their actions.”Ms Ghani, who refused to rule out that she has ambitions to one day replace Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said people needed to be encouraged to go into politics and appeal more to women and working class people.She told GB News: “I think the real challenge that we have in politics is how do we incentivise people to do the right thing? And how do you ensure when people do the right thing, that they aren’t admonished for doing that as well?”I think the biggest challenge that we have in politics is in providing the space for women and then working class people to come forward. Because we don’t naturally have those networks and power bases when we get to Parliament.”Ms Ghani was asked how she copes with the level of racist abuse she has received on social media: “I’ve been an MP since 2015, and when you’re a female Conservative member of Parliament, I always expected a little bit of pushback. It’s like politics is pretty brutal, and that was fine.”What I didn’t expect to be so much commentary about my faith or my race, but I suppose I’ve got a thick skin over the years.”LATEST DEVELOPMENTSLabour MP opens up about foster care experience before issuing warning about sectorGB News reflects on Gloria de Piero’s extraordinary interview with Natalie Fleet MPTory MP decided against joining Labour because party ‘treated black people as victims’Recalling meeting a young politics student at an event, Ms Ghani revealed that he’d told her he “no longer wants to enter politics” after seeing the abuse she had received online.She recalled: “Just this week I was at an event where we had 2000 young people studying politics at A-level, who came and asked questions of different types of MPs. “And then a young chap called Darren said he’d seen my Twitter, seen people commenting about me on Twitter, and a lot of that was abusive about me being female and not being white Brit, as it were.”And he said that he doesn’t want to enter the space. And I think that’s the worst thing that can happen.”Ms Ghani made clear: “So my job is to continue going forward and ensuring that more people that think that Parliament and the green benches and SW1 isn’t for them, saying it is for you, and there are so many of us here that will be super supportive once you get here.”But if we vacate that space, we will have people representing us and our views and our ambitions that have no shared experiences with us. And for me, fundamentally, that is somebody that, even though I am a Sussex MP, I’m also a Brummie.”I grew up in Birmingham, in a very working class area, where people’s opportunities were incredibly limited. And I want to make sure that those people are fully represented so their ambitions can be understood by the Government.”And people like myself who have to just have a huge amount of resilience, we’re not going to be pushed out to make space for people that are undeserving.”Watch the full Gloria Meets interview on GB News at 2pm on Sunday.
Our Standards:
The GB News Editorial Charter
