Posts from the ‘Recent News’ Category

May 18

Sayeeda Warsi: Evening Standard Interview

Published in the Evening Standard, Friday 18th May 2012 by Joe Murphy

Baroness Warsi: Father asked me ‘why be a leader if you don’t take the lead?’

Baroness Warsi may be a Cabinet minister with all the finely-honed minds of the civil service to call upon, but sometimes the adviser she trusts most is simply her dad.

So it was when the horrific details of the Rochdale sexual grooming scandal poured out in a shocking court case this month.

Five white girls, aged 13 to 15, were plied with alcohol, food and money and subjected to multiple sex attacks. The guilty men were Muslims of mainly Pakistani origin, some regarded as pillars of their community.

Shortly after nine men were convicted, Lady Warsi sat down to dinner at her parents’ house and her father asked what the Government was going to do about it. She did not know. The baroness recalled: “Dad then said, ‘Well, what are you doing about it?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s not me, it’s a Home Office issue’.” At this her father, Safdar, gave her a remarkable lecture.

“He said to me: ‘Sayeeda, what is the point in being in a position of leadership if you don’t lead on issues that are so fundamental? This is so stomach churningly sick that you should have been out there condemning it as loudly as you could. Uniquely, you are in a position to show leadership on this.’

“I thought to myself, he’s absolutely right.” Today she has decided to use an interview with the Evening Standard to do as her father advised.

Apr 23

Chairman visits Crawley ahead of local elections

Today, Sayeeda made a visit to Crawley to support the work of Conservatives in the area ahead of the local elections.

Joined by Crawley Chairman Liam Marshall-Ascough, Sayeeda met with community members and businesspeople at Broadfield Barton.

She was welcomed by Conservative candidate for Broadfield South Cllr Lee Gilroy before taking questions from the group and meeting with local media.

Apr 5

Chairman visits West Midlands on campaign tour

Continuing her tour this week, Sayeeda spent the morning campaigning with Redditch Conservatives in Matchborough, Church Hill and Winyates wards.

The Chairman launches the Birmingham local election campaign with Conservatives at the Council House

After a quick cuppa and time with the local press, Sayeeda travelled to central Birmingham where she was welcomed by the Birmingham Patrons’ Club and answered members’ questions at the club’s lunch event.

Joined by Conservative candidates, Sayeeda then hosted the Birmingham Campaign Launch at the city’s Council House.

The Chairman also visited the Wyrley Birch Estate in Kingstanding ward with local candidate Gary Sambrook for litter picking in the area.

The Chairman ended the day with a fundraising event hosted by Nicky Morgan MP in Barrow upon Soar.

Apr 4

Chairman visits Oxford, Gloucester and Cheltenham on campaign tour

Leaving London early on Wednesday morning, Sayeeda was back on the road for two days of campaign tours beginning with Oxford, Gloucester and Cheltenham.

Sayeeda campaigns with Nicola Blackwood MP in Summertown

Arriving in Oxford and met by Nicola Blackwood MP, she was just in time for the 23 Pioneer Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps homecoming parade.

Nicola and Sayeeda visited the Oxford Student Hub for a tour the hub’s facilities and to meet with staff there before campaigning in Summertown at a street stall set up by local Conservatives.

Bidding farewell to Oxford, Sayeeda moved on to Gloucester for a visit with the Gloucester Citizen ahead of the paper’s Apprenticeship Awards. The Chairman then held a community meeting in Barton with Cllr Sajid Patel and Conservative candidate Nasreen Akhtar to discuss local issues.

The Chairman visits Podsmead Dreamscheme, Gloucester

After some telephone canvassing with councillors for upcoming by-elections at the Gloucester Conservatives office, Sayeeda visited the Podsmead “Dreamscheme” – an initiative which has recently been awarded Big Local funding. The Chairman was welcomed by staff and young people – and was pleased to judge an anti-litter poster campaign.

Sayeeda completed the day in Cheltenham at a packed-out Meet the Chairman event.

Mar 24

Sayeeda Warsi: Scottish Conservative Party Conference Speech

INTRODUCTION

As Tory Chairman I spend a lot of my time taking on unions – namely the ones that fund Labour’s campaigns.

But today I want to come out and defend a Union.

One which has benefitted us all for centuries.

One which is key to our success as a nation.

And one which we must work flat-out to keep intact:

The Union between Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland.

That is why I wholeheartedly support the launch of the Conservative Friends of the Union group.

Which couldn’t have a better champion than the dynamic, enthusiastic, vibrant and hugely patriotic Ruth Davidson.

Now we’ve all heard – and will continue to hear – the reasons why we should preserve our Union.

Mar 22

Chairman visits Waltham Cross, Milton Keynes and Cambridge on campaign tour

On Thursday Baroness Warsi began a day of campaigning in North London. Arriving at Waltham Cross Station, the Chairman was met by Cllr Paul Mason, Leader of Broxbourne Borough Council.

Sayeeda campaigns in Waltham Cross

Sayeeda’s first visit of the day was to Waltham Cross Conservative Club, where she met with MP Charles Walker, Chairman of the Conservative Councillors Association Cllr Robert Gordon and by-election candidate Dee Hart. The Chairman joined volunteers in telephone canvassing for Dee’s campaign before leaving for Milton Keynes.

Her next stop was at the Bletchley Conservative Club to launch the Milton Keynes Local Government Campaign. The Chairman also met with local press and joined Conservative members for a Q&A session.

After leaving Bletchley, Sayeeda travelled to Cambridge where she was welcomed at the Cambridge City Conservative Association dinner.

Mar 15

Sayeeda Warsi Ebor Lecture 2012

INTRODUCTION

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Giving the Ebor Lecture is very significant for me.

Not only because I’m Yorkshire born and bred.

But because I have spent my governmental career arguing on your very theme:

The growing need for faith to interact with public issues in today’s society.

It started with a speech in 2010 when I declared that our government would make a clean break with the past administration and would ‘do God’.

Since then many have pointed out that, as a Cabinet Minister without Portfolio, I have assigned myself the portfolio of faith…

Even His Holiness Pope Benedict referred to me during his 2010 UK visit as the Minister for God!

Exactly one month ago today I led our country’s reciprocal visit to the Vatican.

It was our largest ever ministerial delegation to the Holy See.

As I walked through a sun-drenched St Peter’s Square with the Archbishop of Westminster it was a very special moment.

Knowing that he a Catholic, me a Muslim, and many of my colleagues were united in a common aim:

To demonstrate the importance of faith and the important links between our respective beliefs.

When I then spoke at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy there I wanted to make one simple point:

That Europe needs to feel stronger and more confident in its Christianity.

That you simply cannot erase Christianity from our heritage any more than you can erase the spires from our landscapes.

And that this firm basis creates a space for people of minority faiths.

I wanted that point to ring out beyond the Vatican walls.

To be heard far away where states were repressing religion.

To be heard closer to home where secularism was squeezing out faith…

…perpetuated both by the well-intentioned who want to create a level playing field for all beliefs by diminishing faith…

…and by those ideologically opposed to faith altogether.

In the month since I made that argument, it has started quite an interesting debate.

Mar 13

Sayeeda Warsi: Project Maja

On March 1st 2012, 20 years to the day since Bosnia Herzegovina declared its independence, Parliamentarians from across Europe travelled to the country as part of Project Maja.

The project brought together nine British MPs, four MEPs, five Turkish MPs and MPs from Iceland and Poland, Members of the SDA in Bosnia Herzegovina, including Project Maja founder, Conservative Party Co-Chairman Baroness Warsi.

Their aim was clear: to learn about the tragedy of the war in Bosnia and its aftermath, to give something back to their community and to build stronger links with Bosnia in order to help the fragile state achieve its political ambitions.

The 40-strong delegation including representatives from the Mothers of Srebrenica travelled to Srebrenica, laying wreaths to remember the 8,000 victims of the 1995 genocide. They also spent two days renovating the Christine Witcutt Centre, a school in Sarajevo for children with special needs. And they held high level meetings with their Bosnian counterparts in order to discuss the future of the country.

Mar 10

Sayeeda Warsi: We should allow democracy a chance in Pakistan

KARACHI: Baroness Saeeda Warsi, the first-ever Muslim member of the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron cabinet, said that Pakistan’s democracy has a bright future but for that the democratic process should be allowed to continue.

Talking exclusively to The News via phone from the UK, Warsi said: “I believe that we should let the democratic process continue in Pakistan and allow the infant democracy a chance to grow.”

Warsi said that the time is approaching when current democratic government in Pakistan will give way to another democratic government.

“Handing over power to another democratically-elected government through a democratic process will be a historical moment for Pakistan,” she said and added she is hopeful one would be able to see the emergence of great democracy in the future. “But to move forward for a better future, we have to allow this process of growth to take place and we need to be patient,” she stressed. Warsi said that she was quite optimistic about the future of Pakistan and that things will improve, adding Pakistan has a lot of potential which needs to be discovered and utilized properly.

She said that during her visit to Pakistan in January this year she met a large number of businessmen and professionals which made her to realise that people have mixed feelings about the future of Pakistan.

On interfaith harmony especially between Muslims and Christians, she said: “I have been working on bringing interfaith harmony, especially after 9/11. I, as a Muslim, think it is my responsibility to try to make the two sides come together and talk. I have over the years managed to do so and have had offered a platform where people from different religious background have come together and talked on a variety of topics that would have been left untouched otherwise.”

“I believe in social action and I think if you can bring people of different backgrounds to work together to attain a single goal, it will help build better relations between the two,” she said and added she had embarked on several social action projects in several countries where parliamentarians and/or politicians worked together on one project for the betterment of the whole and this helped build bonds between them and they interacted in ways that would have probably been difficult otherwise.

“Say for example if public office holders from different religious/cultural backgrounds in Pakistan come together and decide to clean a local park, working together for a common goal will allow them to know each other better and a better relationship is formed between them.”

Warsi stressed that the politicians as well as people should not wait for others to do the work instead they should get together for a particular goal.

“If politicians and leaders from different parties work together, they will be able to resolve a lot of issues that would otherwise take longer to be resolved and hence improve the overall situation and make a difference in the society, as well as country as a whole.”

Mar 9

Sayeeda Warsi: House Magazine Interview

New flavours in the Tory kitchen

Published in The House Magazine, Thursday 8th March

By Paul Waugh and Sam Macrory

Baroness Warsi jokes that if she wasn’t campaigning she’d be cooking for a living, but the very model of a modern Tory chairwoman thrives on confounding cultural expectations

Sayeeda Warsi is in her CCHQ office, pondering what her mother thinks. She may be co-chairman of the Conservative Party, a privy counsellor and the first ever female Muslim cabinet minister, but it seems parental approval of her life choices is not easily won.

“My mum wanted me to be a lawyer and she chose my husband [for an arranged marriage]. And I’m now divorced and remarried, and a politician: so you can read from that what you want,” she says.

Hints of maternal disappointment certainly don’t seem to dampen the bubbly enthusiasm of the woman who has, in many ways, come to embody David Cameron’s modern Tory party.

In at the ground floor with the Cameron project, Baroness Warsi is now not just a minister but also the PM’s anti-Lib Dem and Labour attack dog, his elections field marshal and – increasingly – his personal envoy in key strategic countries overseas.

Crucially, she also tries to combine the modernising message of the Conservatives with a thoroughly traditional approach to the party’s core values and history. Her own small office in Millbank Tower is a microcosm of the mix of old and new. Hung on her wall like an artwork is a heavy black leather briefcase with the forbidding words ‘Chairman of the Conservative Party’ emblazoned on its side. It’s an artefact that reeks of the history of past chairmen such as Norman Tebbit, Rab Butler, Willie Whitelaw and others. But just underneath is a black and white Andrew Parsons portrait of a relaxed Mr Cameron, jacketless and sleeves rolled up, alongside Warsi herself. She jokes that the photo makes it “look like David is going to punch me”.

Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party and Minister Without Portfolio