Fury as Labour MP calls for Pakistan airport amid Birmingham bin chaos (2025)

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A Birmingham MP has provoked a furious backlash for continuing to publicly fight for an airport in Pakistan - despite the city’s bin strike crisis rumbling on.

Tahir Ali, Labour MP for Hall Green and Moseley, first came under fire last month for supporting a campaign calling for a new airport to be built in Mirpur, Kashmir, along with 19 other MPs.

He claimed the failure to build an airport in Mirpur caused ‘significant issues to a number of my constituents who are having to drive over three hours to get to the nearest airport in Pakistan’.

But critics pointed out that he was an MP in Birmingham, not Kashmir, and his constituents were facing a far more urgent crisis at home as the city’s binmen began an all-out strike.

Now Mr Ali has reignited the row by attending a press conference in Birmingham this month to lobby for the airport to be built.

He gave an address to the meeting in the Mirpuri Punjabi dialect, rather than English, in which he appeared to boast about the amount of attention the controversy had generated.

In a translated clip of the speech, shared widely on social media, he said: ‘You will have seen in October when I asked in Prime Minister’s Questions, which the right wing picked up, got it to seven million views on my Twitter. The video about Mirpur Airport currently has over nine million views.

‘Because of this, Mirpur is now on the map and everyone knows of it.’

In a bizarre attack, Mr Ali went on to claim that the ‘Indian lobby’ was behind the backlash to his proposals - alleging this shadowy group were engineering reaction from Tory MPs including Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

He continued: ‘We will fulfil the demands of the Kashmiri people…all of us are working for the same goal, for Kashmir.’

Mr Ali’s latest intervention comes as the city he is paid to represent is in the grip of a major crisis, with mountains of uncollected rubbish piled on Birmingham’s streets due to the bin strike.

Despite his constituency being at the epicentre of the strike - which has led to widespread concerns about the threat to public health - Mr Ali has not tweeted about it once since it began on March 12.

Instead, he has tweeted repeatedly about foreign issues including Kashmir and the war in Gaza.

Tory MPs were quick to express their outrage at Mr Ali’s statement to the activist airport conference.

Mr Jenrick, who is shadow justice secretary, said: ‘This Labour MP accuses Conservative MPs of being controlled by the “Indian lobby” for telling him to focus on Birmingham, not Pakistan.

‘He cannot fathom a politician putting Britain’s interests first. So he projects his sectarian tribalism onto us. Does Starmer condone this?’

Nick Timothy, Tory MP for West Suffolk, said: ‘Lots of flags at this Labour-attended Birmingham event. None of them British.

‘This was where local MPs joined campaigners to demand an airport not here but in Pakistan.’

Former chief secretary to the treasury Sir Simon Clarke, who lost his seat as a Tory MP last year, said it was ‘unbelievable footage’ showing ‘openly sectarian politics at the work in the UK’.

Mr Ali previously sought to quell criticism of his campaign in a social media video earlier this month, accusing critical MPs of wrongly implying he wanted British taxpayers to fund the airport.

He said: ‘In my constituency of Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, we have the largest Kashmiri community in the UK, the vast majority of them from the Mirpur region.

‘The proposed airport in Mirpur has widespread support amongst the community, and it’s only right that I represent all views in Parliament.’

He added: ‘The idea we were encouraging the British Government to fund the airport is completely unfounded, and frankly ridiculous.’

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