Anti-corruption role was an accident waiting to happen for Starmer, say No 10 insiders

The warning signs were always there. When a photo of Tulip Siddiq standing alongside Vladimir Putin and her aunt, the now ousted leader of Bangladesh, emerged in 2015, alarm bells rang within the Labour party.

- Pippa Crerar

At the time, Siddiq was the Labour candidate for the marginal seat of Hampstead and Kilburn. Yet she brushed aside concerns over her presence at the signing of a billion-dollar arms deal and nuclear power project at the Kremlin two years earlier.

"I wasn't part of my aunt's delegation. I went because I don't get to see her much," she told the Evening Standard. "At the meeting, Putin said: 'Is your family here? I'd like a picture.' In retrospect, I should have thought about how it looked. I think Putin would wonder: 'Who is this random girl I am meant to be making arms deals with?'"

There are now some inside Downing Street – after the scale of her links to the ousted Bangladeshi government became clear – who wish they had thought a little bit more about how it looked before they appointed her as the government's anti-corruption minister.

"It was an own goal," said one Labour MP. "Everybody knew she was a member of Bangladesh's political dynasty with links to huge power and money. Who on earth thought it was a good idea drawing attention to all that by giving her that job?"