GROWING UP in south London, life was tough for a young Dr Rosena Allin-Khan.
Born and brought up in Tooting in a working-class household, Allin-Khan recalled there only being one heater in the house, which they had to move from room to room to keep themselves warm. Her single mother worked three jobs to keep the family financially afloat.
She aspired to work in medicine – but was told “it wasn’t for girls like (her)”, as it was financially prohibitive, and she didn’t come from the “right background”.
Allin-Khan, who failed her A-levels due to difficult circumstances at home, knew she had to keep fighting if she wanted to pursue her dream career. “I think my upbringing led me to believe I had no choice but to sink or swim,” she tells GG2 Power List.
Today, Allin-Khan is the Labour representative for her beloved Tooting, as well as a qualified doctor. She stood as a candidate for the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election earlier this year, ultimately, coming second to Angela Rayner, and was appointed the shadow minister for mental health in the same year. Previously, she was the shadow minister for sport for just under four years, and has retained her Tooting seat in both the 2017 and 2019 elections.
Although she credits her own resilience for her success, Allin-Khan believes the Labour government gave her an opportunity to fulfil her potential when life looked bleak. “The Labour government turned my life around,” she claims. “I redid my A-Levels, did a degree and went to Cambridge to study medicine, and I’m afraid those possibilities aren’t going to be there for a new generation of kids under this Tory government.”
Her career in medicine has, no doubt, upped her popularity with voters too.
Although she has admitted it can be hard to juggle her time between Westminster and Tooting’s St George’s Hospital, her medical roots are never far from her thoughts.
As the 2020 coronavirus pandemic threatened to overwhelm the NHS, Allin-Khan, an A&E doctor and intensive care specialist, has been on hand to deliver the care and support for patients affected by the virus. In April, she confirmed she was returning to the front-line and helping those in need. Her passion for the health services has made the headlines too.
Last May, Allin-Khan publicly clashed with health secretary Matt Hancock during a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons.
After Allin-Khan asked him if the lack of coronavirus testing had “cost lives,” Hancock reprimanded her and told her to “watch her tone”.
Later, Allin-Khan wrote a scathing response on Twitter: “I will not ‘watch my tone’ when dozens of NHS and care staff are dying unnecessarily. Families are being torn apart.”
This is not the first time that Allin-Khan has contributed her medical abilities during a crisis. She has worked as a humanitarian aid doctor in disaster zones across the world, including a 2017 trip to Bangladesh where she met with Rohingya Muslims who had fled Myanmar. The doctor travelled to the country with UK charity Christian Aid and MedGlobal, a humanitarian response team.
She treated many patients from the camps and recalled some of the health problems she witnessed, including individuals who suffered physical trauma from their treatment while living in Rakhine. The mother-of-two said it was especially “heart-breaking” to speak to othermothers who had lost their children in “horrific” circumstances. She said several women told her they had to choose between going back into the fires to try and rescue their children who were being burnt alive, or fleeing with their remaining children. “I couldn’t even sleep [after hearing their stories],” she tells Eastern Eye newspaper. “As a mother, my overwhelming feeling was that we have a duty to protect children and families all over the world.”
Although relatively well-known within political circles, Allin-Khan truly rose to prominence when she stood as a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election.
She drew upon her passion for the NHS, her background as a doctor and vowed to “rebuild trust with the nation,” following the Labour’s party devastating loss in the 2019 general election. On her role in the race, Allin-Khan says she was determined to use it as an opportunity to help “ethnic minorities own their identity and be proud of it”.
“That is what I want people to feel I embody when they look at me,” she explains. “For me, being in the race, if that was the one thing I got out of it…that other young British Asians can look at me and say, ‘if she can do it, I can do it too’, then that is my job done.”
Allin-Khan admits she had faced prejudice due to her mixed Pakistani-Polish heritage and has received criticism that she “isn’t fully Asian”. In response to the comments, the MP is keen to highlight her mixed heritage does not make her Asian background any less “important, valuable or special.”
“I identify with being an Asian woman, in the same way that I am proud to be Polish,” she says. “Some people in the Asian community wonder how Asian I feel because I’m of mixed race, but I’m proud to wear my sari and embrace my heritage.”
Some have even suggested that she change her forename to Rosie and take her husband’s surname to downplay her ethnicity. However, Allin-Khan is proud of her roots and is keen to emphasise it. “I went double barrelled because I didn’t want to lose the Asian part of my surname and that for me, is very important,” she says.
“I am proud to say that this is who I am – a Polish and Pakistani, proudly British Muslim woman who loves the Labour party.”
