Biraderi networks are transforming local politics

Why British politicians are campaigning for a new airport … in Pakistan

This article was first published in The Critic in late March. All articles published elsewhere are published free here; but for paywalled articles & postscripts, subscribe below.

Last week, something of a stir was caused in Westminster as 20 MPs made the novel decision to call for a new airport.

British MPs demanding vital infrastructure? Hallelujah! Finally, Britain’s irrelevance is at an end. Anglofuturism is nigh; first the new airport, next a fleet of SMRs. The Maglev through Britain’s temperate rainforest is just a few years away; the Helium-3 mines on the moon are within our grasp. Hail Starmer, the YIMBY crown is yours!

Alas, it was too much to ask for. The call was made for a new airport, and by British MPs, but not for Britain — rather, it was for a new international airport in Mirpur. Co-ordinated by Mohammed Yasin MP, the letter was addressed to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, thanking him for his “political, diplomatic and moral support given to Kashmiris” whilst stressing that “The Kashmiri diaspora in the UK, including significant numbers of our constituents, have concerns regarding the journey times by road.” These are genuine inhibitors to travel, the MPs note, often taking in excess of three hours.

But it is not the length of the road journeys alone that has inspired this letter. One of the signatories, Tahir Ali, MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, spoke about the airport in a video. He stressed its importance, not as a logistical improvement, but as a way to preserve the connection between the Kashmiri diaspora in Britain and what he called the “motherland”.

“As a British parliamentarian,” he said:

I think it’s very important to highlight a very significant topic, which is relevant to both people that have heritage in Pakistan and the Zad Kashmir and for the Pakistani government. But there is a massive demand, not only because it impacts our culture, our heritage, but there’s a massive demand for an international airport to be situated within Azad. But most significantly, we want to ensure that there’s a strong cultural tie between our third and fourth generation in this country and the motherland, the land that we have strong affinity to. But I see the difficulties which our community here in the UK, more than about a million people diaspora, which comes from Azad Kashmir, want an airport situated within that region, so it’s easy to get to their home destination.

Ali’s focus on the airport’s role as a link between homeland and diaspora reveals much about an understudied, but increasingly influential, force at play in the politics of the multicultural YooKay: the biraderi network.

Whereas the nuclear family underpins British life at its most local, South Asian society tends to be built on wide networks of extended relatives. People depend on these familial ties for financial assistance, social support and job opportunities. Family ties are therefore integral to people’s social and professional lives, and kinship groups are more important than external institutions. This system encourages a deep sense of loyalty and mutual obligation, where individuals prioritise the interests of their kin over outsiders. As a result, South Asian kinship-based politics depend on the politics of clientelism.

When Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigration took off into Britain in the 1970s, these familial networks were ingrained in British society — creating a patronage-driven political landscape in constituencies with large South Asian populations.

As I wrote in another substack (link below):

The UK’s First Past the Post electoral system benefits parties with geographically concentrated support, particularly at the local level where turnout is low and communities are more easily accessed. In areas with significant South Asian communities, therefore, local politicians formed close ties with biraderi elders or community representatives. For biraderi leaders, acting as community representatives brought prestige and influence within the South Asian population, whilst politicians saw biraderi elders as gatekeepers to a potential bloc vote. This dynamic created a system where politicians became patrons, and biraderi leaders acted as clients, delivering votes in exchange for political favour — what Lewis Baston termed “manipulated clan politics.”

Biraderi networks remain strong between the diaspora and the “motherland”. This is enabled by instantaneous communications, but also by a strong culture of maintaining cultural ties in person. Approximately 500,000 British nationals visit Pakistan annually, with a large proportion likely to be British Pakistanis travelling to visit family and maintain cultural ties. Given that the diaspora is estimated at 1.6m, it’s reasonable to assume a substantial number of the UK’s Pakistani diaspora make trips to Pakistan each year.

Indeed, accessing the Biraderi networks is no longer an election tactic that is solely deployed in Britain. In his 2005 campaign for Bethnal & Bow Green, George Galloway visited Sylhet (Bangladesh has a similar Biraderi system, which has largely the same effect in British politics) in order to appeal to voters in Tower Hamlets. The tactic is reported to have worked marvellously — “since his visit, voters in Bethnal Green have been receiving phone calls from their relatives in Bangladesh telling them to cast their votes for Galloway”.

It is easy to look at this letter by MPs and conclude that it is a secondary effect of immigration. Of course it is — but that belies the complexity of the relationship between diaspora and “motherland”, the regularity of contact and the increasing importance issues in South Asia will have on British politics as the size of the diaspora increases.

As noted multiculturalism understander Chris Bayliss has written in these most august pages, the establishment seems remarkably incurious about what multiculturalism might mean — including for how it might affect our democracy. British democracy is unused to the influence of clannishness like this, and it is dangerously ill-equipped to deal with it. Will it be an improvement? Given the tremendous standard of governing it has produced in Bangladesh and Pakistan, it seems unlikely.