# Zarah Sultana

Zarah Sultana (born 31 October 1993) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry South since the 2019 general election. She was a Labour Party MP until her suspension. Sultana received a suspension in July 2024 as one of seven Labour MPs who voted to scrap the two-child benefit cap. On the political left, she is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, and was also chair of the group until her resignation in February 2025.

## Early life and education

Sultana was born in Birmingham on 31 October 1993, to a Muslim family of Pakistani ancestry and was raised with her three sisters in Lozells. Her grandfather migrated from Thub in the Dadyal Tehsil of the Mirpur District of Azad Kashmir to Birmingham, England in the 1960s.
Sultana attended Holte School, a non-selective community school, before studying at the selective King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for sixth form. At age 17, she visited Israel and the West Bank, observing a military court trial. She went on to study International Relations and Economics at the University of Birmingham.
Sultana joined the Labour Party in 2011, whilst studying for her A-levels, following the coalition government's decision to treble university tuition fees to £9,000. Whilst at university, Sultana was elected to the National Executive Council of both Young Labour and the National Union of Students. In 2018 Sultana was the Parliamentary Officer for the UK Based Muslim lobby group MEND.

## Parliamentary career
### 2019 European Parliament election campaign

Sultana was listed fifth of seven among the Labour candidates for the 2019 European Parliament elections in the West Midlands constituency, meaning that she would be elected if Labour received enough votes in the region to appoint five MEPs. She was not elected, as Labour won only one MEP in the constituency.

### 2019 general election campaign

In October 2019, she was selected as the Labour candidate for Coventry South, after the incumbent Labour MP Jim Cunningham announced that he would stand down. Her campaign was backed by Unite the Union, Momentum, the Fire Brigades Union, the Communication Workers Union and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers' Union. However, her selection was opposed by some local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) members, who preferred local candidates; one member would tell Jewish News in 2021 that the CLP was "remarkably moderate" in comparison to Sultana. Sultana was elected at the 2019 general election, with a majority of 401 votes.
During the 2019 election campaign, The Jewish Chronicle reported that in 2015, whilst she was a student, Sultana made social media posts from a subsequently deleted account which implied that she would celebrate the deaths of the former Labour prime minister Tony Blair, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US President George W. Bush and she supported "violent resistance" by Palestinians. As a teenager, Sultana sent tweets telling someone whom she described as pro-Israel to "jump off a cliff" and compared the Holocaust to those who were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya. In tweets, Sultana used slang phrases for white people—"YT" and "the white woman"—to describe some Jewish people. Sultana apologised for the posts and stated that she no longer held those views and "wrote them out of frustration rather than any malice". The Labour Party re-interviewed her as a consequence of the posts, but she remained the party's candidate. After her election, The Jewish Chronicle reported on a further social media post made by Sultana in 2015, in which she stated that students supporting Zionism were "advocating a racist ideology...and champion[ing] a state created through ethnic cleansing, sustained through occupation, apartheid and war crimes."

### 2019–2024, Parliament

In her maiden speech, she decried "40 years of Thatcherism", criticised the effects of austerity, and voiced her support for a Green New Deal to combat climate change. She joined the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group shortly after being elected and in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, nominated Rebecca Long-Bailey for leader and Richard Burgon for deputy leader. Neither was elected.
In January 2020, Sultana was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Dan Carden, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. She was removed from this role by Keir Starmer when he became leader in April 2020. Later in 2020, she opposed the Overseas Operations (Military Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which proposed a "'presumption against prosecution' of service personnel accused of committing a crime overseas if more than five years have passed since the alleged offence took place."
In December 2020, UNICEF announced that it would provide £25,000 to the charity School Food Matters so that vulnerable children and families in Southwark could be supplied with thousands of breakfast boxes over the Christmas school holidays. In parliament Sultana said that it was the first time UNICEF had been required to "feed working-class kids in the UK. But while children go hungry, a wealthy few enjoy obscene riches". She mentioned that Jacob Rees-Mogg is "reportedly in line to receive an £800,000 dividend payout this year". Rees-Mogg criticised UNICEF's action and called it "a political stunt of the lowest order". Sultana then sent Rees-Mogg a copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, writing inside "Jacob, it seems this wasn't on Eton's reading list. Merry Christmas, Zarah".
In January 2021, Sultana called for prisoners to be prioritised for COVID-19 vaccinations, describing them as "a high risk setting for transmission" and as such, it would be a "humane approach to a completely disenfranchised population".
In April 2021, Sultana was profiled by Marie Le Conte for Vogue magazine, along with her Labour colleagues Charlotte Nichols, Taiwo Owatemi, and Sarah Owen. She spoke about the abuse she receives as a Muslim and as a woman of colour, including death threats and being told to 'go back to her own country'. Sultana was described as "one of the most left-wing new Labour MPs" who had "made a name for herself as an outspoken critic of the Government". In September 2021, Sultana broke down in tears during a debate in Parliament recounting the "Islamophobic hate" she had been subject to since being elected.
In May 2021, alongside celebrities and other public figures, Sultana was a signatory to an open letter from Stylist magazine which called on the government to address what it described as an "epidemic of male violence" by funding an "ongoing, high-profile, expert-informed awareness campaign on men's violence against women and girls".
In September 2021, Sultana chaired the Fire Brigade Union's Climate Catastrophe: The Case for a Socialist Green New Deal fringe event at the Labour Party conference. In October 2021, she joined cross-party MPs including Caroline Lucas and Clive Lewis to launch the Green New Deal Bill in Parliament, "a game-changing plan to stop climate change and build a world in which we can thrive", which she described in a LabourList article as having "social justice at its heart, putting the interests of the many ahead of the greed of the few."
On 24 February 2022, following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sultana was one of 11 Labour MPs threatened with losing the party whip after they signed a statement by the Stop the War Coalition which questioned the legitimacy of NATO and accused the alliance of "eastward expansion". All 11 MPs subsequently removed their signatures. After receiving a death threat, she criticised what she described as "inaccurate" reports by the media for creating "an active danger to the safety of public figures, and threaten[ing] to narrow our democracy". In a statement to The Guardian she said that she "unequivocally condemned" the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine. She also criticised an anonymous Labour source who described the 11 MPs as a "mouthpiece for the Kremlin", and said that she had complained to party chair Anneliese Dodds about party sources disseminating "dangerous and irresponsible messages".
In March 2022 Sultana pledged to donate her upcoming £2,212 pay rise to Coventry Foodbank and local charities in the city "supporting refugees, to help Ukrainians and all those fleeing brutal war". She also organised a crowd funding campaign for Coventry Foodbank which raised £10,000, which equated to over five tonnes of food. She delivered a speech in Parliament on the cost of living crisis in May 2022.
In October 2022, Sultana was reselected as the Labour Party MP for her constituency, after receiving 90% of the vote from six local branches of the party and support from all participating affiliate organisations. In November 2022 she addressed the picket line during the University and College Union (UCU) strikes on the University of Warwick campus.
In December 2022, Sultana introduced a Ten Minute Rule bill to Parliament that would extend free school meals to all primary school pupils, titled the "Free School Meals for All Bill". It was supported by the National Education Union’s No Child Left Behind campaign.
In December 2022, when over 2,000 firefighters and control staff attended a rally in Westminster to protest low pay, Sultana addressed the crowd alongside Jeremy Corbyn and Matt Wrack. In 2023 she opposed the Strike (Minimum Service Levels) Bill and was chair of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group.

### 2024–onwards, Parliament

At the general election in 2024, Sultana was re-elected and increased her majority from 401 to over 10,000, receiving 20,361 votes. She was featured in a Vogue article about 13 female Labour MPs who were elected.
During the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, she developed a significant media presence commenting on the situation in Gaza and UK arms exports to Israel. During this time she has become the MP receiving the most death threats and online abuse.
On 23 July 2024, she, along with six other Labour MPs, had the whip withdrawn for voting against the government and in favour of a Scottish National Party amendment to end the two child benefit cap. She said that “I have to stand up for what I believe are the true values of the Labour Party and in doing so I've made difficult decisions in terms of defying the whip." Although the suspensions were initially said to be for six months, Sultana, John McDonnell, and Apsana Begum have still not had the whip restored as of February 2025.
In September 2024, Sultana voted against the Labour government and in favour of a motion to block the proposed cut in winter fuel payment.

## Recognition

In March 2022, Sultana received an MP of the Year Award from the Patchwork Foundation, celebrating her work championing "underrepresented and disadvantaged communities across the UK." She also presented the Campaigner of the Year award at the PinkNews Awards, to Nemat Sadat, an Afghan-American queer activist and novelist.
Also in 2022, a photograph of Sultana featured in the Creative Connections Coventry exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, which celebrated cultural and political figures with connections to the city. In 2023, she was nominated for a "Backbencher of the Year" award by the public relations firm Pagefield, and shortly afterwards, she received a "Coventry Legends Award" by Coventry United Women's Football Club in recognition of her work "as a committed champion of Coventry" and "for being an amazing female role model."
In May 2023, she was ranked 47th on the New Statesman's "left power list", which described her as a "rare" "genuinely viral politician". She says that social media is a "really effective in reaching out to newer audiences, younger audiences and getting out political messages".