Mission to build hope

Why Tory and Labour politicians united

- Zoe Williams

They start off nursing cups of tea on opposite sides of the table, and sit on opposing sides of the party political divide, but Gurinder Singh Josan and Kris Hopkins find a common cause when it comes to the rise of populism, 1970s-style racism and community division - and discovering ways to resist it.

Josan, 53, isa Labour MP; Hopkins, 62, a former Tory MP. It is bracing how different they are: different politics, different pasts, different manners, different modes of expression, everything is different, but on this issue they are under the same banner.

Both are trustees of Hope Unlimited Charitable Trust, one of the Guardian 2025 appeal’s five partner charities. The appeal is raising funds for practical grassroots voluntary projects that build hope, tolerance and trust as an antidote to division, hatred and despair.

Josan’s interest was sparked asa student at Royal Holloway, University of London in the 1990s. He was in the Labour club, anda member of the far-right British National party (BNP) had just become a student at the university.

Josan said: “That was a major thing. The UK representative of the Ku Klux Klan also lived in Egham, the university town.”

He became deeply embedded in Labour politics as a councillor in Sandwell in the West Midlands from the early 2000s.

In 2024 he was elected as MP for the newly created constituency of Smethwick. He has been Hope Unlimited’s chair of trustees for more than 10 years, and oversaw its recent revamp.