British MP Tulip Siddiq’s car vandalised in ‘targeted attack’

Window smashed and message scrawled on vehicle parked outside her home

Labour Party MP Tulip Siddiq has said was targeted in a recent attack which saw her car window smashed and a message written on the roof of the vehicle. Photo by ISABEL INFANTES / AFP)

A British MP has vowed to remain defiant after her car was vandalised in a “targeted attack” outside her home in west London.

Tulip Siddiq said she awoke to find the window smashed and a message written on the roof of the vehicle, but declined to reveal the wording.

The married mother of two said she would not be intimidated by the attack and insisted she would continue her work as normal.

The incident happened shortly after she returned to her constituency from the Labour party conference in Brighton.

“I’m not going to be intimidated, I’m not going to stop doing my job,” she told The Guardian.

“It has to stop but at the end of the day I’m not going to give in.

“As soon as I saw the car I just thought, I don’t know what you guys are trying to achieve — you’ve underestimated me.”

Ms Siddiq, Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, declined to give details about the message scrawled on her car but said: “The wording made it clear that it was a targeted attack.” Nothing was stolen from the car.

In recent years she has been an outspoken campaigner calling for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who has been detained by authorities in Tehran since April 2016. The British-Iranian had travelled to her homeland to introduce her daughter to her parents and was prevented from leaving the country as she tried to board a flight back to the UK.

Ms Siddiq has worked closely with her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who lives in West Hampstead, to try to secure her release.

Last month she joined him and their daughter outside Parliament for a protest to mark 200 days since Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was imprisoned in Iran.

Ms Siddiq has urged Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson to step up pressure on the Iranian government to release Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Abuse, threats and violence directed against female MPs have hit the headlines in recent years.

The murder of Labour MP Jo Cox just days before the EU referendum in June 2016 shook the UK’s political establishment.

Ms Cox, a married mother of two, was shot and stabbed to death as she left the library in Birstall, near Leeds, in West Yorkshire, where she had held her weekly surgery. Neo-Nazi Thomas Mair was sentenced to life in prison for murder.

In April, a white supremacist was jailed for 28 months after sending hundreds of violent, racist and misogynistic messages to Labour MP Jess Phillips.

Tony Eckersley, 52, from Salford in Greater Manchester, bombarded the MP with more than 300 threatening messages over a nine-month period. In one message he threatened to “have her dealt with”.