Zarah Sultana

Zarah Sultana (born 31 October 1993)[2] is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry South since the 2019 general election.

[20] 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.

[12] 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.

"[25] 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.

[33][34] 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".

[35] 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.

[37] 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.

[38] 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.

"[39][40] 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".

[41] 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".

[42][43] 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".

[52] 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.

[8][57] 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.

[61] 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.

Sultana speaking at a nurses strike , in London, in January 2023