Moz Hossain is one of only two remaining Conservative candidates to become Mayor of London. Photo: David Rose
Moz Hossain's most vivid memories of his 16 years in a village in southern Bangladesh are smells. His parents, Ali Akbar Houlader and Aisha Houlader, were farmers, and the land surrounding the family's wooden hut of 10 grew a variety of foods, from mangoes and pineapples to sugar cane and mustard. “You were walking in the village, and everywhere you smelled: mango, jackfruit, mustard oil,” he says.
Now the 48-year-old potential Conservative candidate for mayor of London lives in the Tower. Hamlets, East London, home to the largest Bangladeshi population in the country. Living there, he jokes, is the easiest way to get a mango, which he still “loves.”
Last week, Dan Korsky, one of Hossain's two rivals, dropped out of the race to become the Conservative candidate to fight with Sadiq Khan after allegations he denied that he molested television producer Daisy Goodwin ten years ago.
Hossein, though far from being a lethargic or retiring character, is visibly emboldened to suddenly be one of two remaining potential candidates that Conservative MPs will be asked to choose from during a two-week voting period starting Tuesday. .
Regarding Korsky's situation, Hossein insists, “Look, I'm a criminal defense attorney. I know I'm becoming a politician, but I'm a royal adviser and I think it would be completely inappropriate for me to comment on this.”
Sitting on the edge of the couch at his campaign headquarters, a former warehouse in King's Cross, Hossain, dressed in a suit, open-necked shirt and bright red socks, uses this opportunity – one of many – to emphasize that his KC status gives him an edge. in the competition.
His proposal to members of the Conservatives is that he will “sue” Khan, 52, who ran the previous two Conservative candidates in 2016 and 2021. Hossain's ultra-expressive manner certainly means that the debate with Khan will be lively.
In each of the last two elections, Khan has risen to the forefront of British politics thanks to his upbringing on a south London council estate as the son of an immigrant bus driver. Hossein's own “backstory”, his team hopes, will at least “undo” any advantage Khan's backstory has given the incumbent mayor in the fight to run City Hall between 2024 and 2028.
Hossein's story is undeniably compelling, starting with the circumstances in which his mother and father – “my dear parents” – were married before they were teenagers.
“They married a few years before the partition of India, he explains.
His father's village, Mollahovla, near Barisal, in the south of the country, was by a canal, and Aisha's family took her by waterway to a prearranged marriage ceremony.< /p>
“My father's family stopped the boat as it passed our house. Was with the whole family. They were all pulled out of the boat and [she] was married to my father.” Hossein's mother was only 11 years old, and his father only slightly older. “So, both my mother and father had no choice in marriage at all. It is very unusual now, but in those days it was quite common.”
Hossain's maternal grandfather was, in his words, “quite well known”, and his father's family elders wanted the two families were joined together.
Ali Akbar and Aisha had eight children – three daughters and five sons, the youngest of whom was Mozammel, now Moz.
Hossain became the first criminal lawyer of Bangladeshi origin to be appointed QC in 2019 and he is now QC. Photo: Richard Baker/in pictures
The family, like the rest of the village, was poor, but “never starved.” , he says.
“We grew everything, and it was intensive farming. On the same piece of land, you can grow rice, and then lentils. Any tropical food, my parents did it too.”
Hossein's mother could not read or write and worked 18 hours a day in the fields and in the family home, a wooden structure with a tin roof and dirt floors. . Her days began at 5 am when she started a big fire in a makeshift clay oven near their house. Hossain recalls the sound of monsoon rain on the roof as “the most wonderful thing.”
“Poverty in the countryside was pretty mild,” he adds. “Even if you had some, you could go into the woods or muddy roads, and there might be some wild root vegetables you could pick.”
Family and other villagers had few clothes and walked around barefoot. Until they demolished the nest one by one, the children slept in the same large bed with their parents.
“The biggest problem was the lack of medical care, so people died from minor ailments. If there was cholera, it would just clean up house after house.”
One of Hossain's sisters died before he was born. Another sister “died after childbirth. My mother talked about them all the time.”
Thinking about the loss of both sisters, Hossain's eyes fill with tears. Later, a third tragedy occurred in the family when another brother died.
“My brother died under a train in Bangladesh. I was closest to him – he was my immediate older brother. He was just very distracted. Before in Bangladesh, a lot of people died under trains, you would have rails and a road next to each other.
“It really affected my poor mother. She was talking about my two sisters and my brother and crying like they died yesterday.”
Now he is wearing a suit and boots, albeit in attractive red socks, but Hossain didn't even have a pair of shoes until he was 16. Photo: David Rose
Hossain describes growing up in a “liberal” Muslim family.
At the age of 16, he traveled 90 miles to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to enroll in Motijheel Model High School. At this point, he was given his first pair of shoes, but he began to appreciate his family's relative poverty compared to the teenagers he now associated with in the capital. At the same time, he also began to develop a sense of injustice – seeing the police dismantle the makeshift shelters used by women and children on the streets of the city – this piqued his interest in a career as a lawyer.
“The only shirt I had was a school uniform and I went to a wedding, it was awkward. The girls thought why are you in school uniform? Because it was the only thing we had.
“Only when I was going to the city, I remembered that I was poor, because everyone else had good shoes and shirts. But my mother gave me an amazing confidence that “you are my son, you can do anything.”
This confidence was shown when he was in his early 20s, when Hossain traveled to the UK in 1995 to join his older brother Mohammad, securing a place at the University of Liverpool to study law – his expenses paid for by his brother, who caught a cold as a young man. brother at Heathrow. Mohammad, then a junior doctor, is now a successful surgeon in London.
At Liverpool, “I was the first international student to become president of the student union. Nobody knew me. I used to go up to everyone in the cafe and say, “My name is Moz Hossein, I want to be president.” And then after every lecture… “My name is Moz Hossain.” And then I got the most votes.” He jokes about how his friends will later “take the mic” remembering “my terrible English and bad haircut.” Hossain with Susan Hall at last month's London mayoral election. Credit: Ben Stevens CCHQ/Parsons Media
But the experience appears to be something of a blueprint for Hossein's audacious attempt to take on Khan – to rival Susan Hall, the 68-year-old former Conservative leader in the London Assembly.
Hossein is conscious. that he is not a typical mayoral candidate, not least because of the apparent lack of political experience on his resume. He originally joined the Conservatives in 2015 before resuming his involvement when he decided in 2021 that he wanted to become mayor.
In his more than two decades as a criminal defense attorney, he part of his time was spent defending individuals accused of various crimes, from fraud to murder and terrorist attacks.
He “fell in love” with London as soon as he arrived from Liverpool after graduation, and now practices at 187 Chambers, where he supervised Edward Duncan Smith, junior lawyer, son of former Tory leader Sir Ian, on multiple occasions. Since then, Sir Ian has supported Hossein's bid to become the Conservative mayoral candidate. He credits a former girlfriend, whose father's cousin was a lawyer, with helping him get his first mini-apprentice, joking, “If there's anything good in me, it's always from women. My mother, my three ex-girlfriends, my sister are always women who have given me more than I deserve.
He is single and says: “The problem is… I am a workaholic. It affects life. I'm ready to fall in love, and it's not that I'm not trying.”
Hossain became QC – now KC – in 2019, after which his mother traveled to the UK to celebrate on her only trip to the country. His father had died a few years before, and his mother had passed away just two years after seeing her son take silk.
It is clear that Hossain is immensely proud of his KC status and is confident that he will become the key to success. winning votes. At the same time, he repeatedly emphasizes that he is not a “career politician”.
“I can tell you that no one has run for mayor of London with more experience in dealing with criminals and crime than I have. there is, he says. He adds that fighting gangs is “an area where I can be extremely arrogant – I know it inside out.”
Hossain warns that London is “not safe” and says a dual approach is needed : being tough on gang leaders and helping to prevent vulnerable young people from resorting to crime.
“Like a criminal. Lawyer, you see people, what they are capable of and why they do it. I see … if you have no hope and nothing to lose, what are you capable of.
“When I was in Liverpool, I worked in an Indian restaurant, earning £20 for a 15-hour shift. It didn't matter because I knew I was going to London to become a lawyer. But if this were my life, and I had neither hope nor the tools to strive, I would be in a quandary.” ” /> Sadiq Khan has been Mayor of London since 2016, and the man Hossein would have to defeat if he were elected as the Conservative candidate. Photo: Andrew Crowley
Many of the young people he championed “have no hope, nothing to lose,” so they ended up settling on gang leaders as role models, he suggests.
“For many, I'm the first adult – a person who believed in them. And you can see the changes. They sit in front of me in the cell and weep and you tell them don't worry, I'm here to watch over you, I'll have your back. Suddenly they see the figure of the father.
In one case, he defended an 18-year-old teenager who was sentenced to 28 years in prison for a double murder. Hossein went to see him in prison and asked how he was feeling.
“For the first time, I have the stability I have always sought,” came the teenager’s shocking response.
Hossein says, that would introduce a “mayor's mentoring” scheme in which successful adults were asked to mentor “a girl from Greenwich or a boy from Bromley” free of charge for three hours a month. According to him, such a program could “give them hope.”
Hossein has already pledged to refrain from expanding Khan's Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). He never learned to drive a car and only learned to ride a bicycle five years ago. But he cites the case of a school cleaning lady he met in Hillingdon last week who told him the pay would be outrageous.
“She called me 'darling' – I love being called 'darling'. She said: “Honey, I pay £250 a month for gas and electricity, how can I pay £12.50 a day for Ulez?” The Ulez expansion is cruel and we should abandon it.”
Hossain says he would also like to freeze the mayor's share of the London council's tax bills to “help many families in need.”
>He also promises to overhaul London's Neighborhood Schemes (LTN), which keep cars out of certain areas, to give residents a say on whether they should stay where they are.
“You can't be anti-car – sometimes people have to use cars,” he says. “What the LTN does in most places is it can take traffic from one place, but then it usually creates traffic in the poorer parts.
“The mayor has no power over each LTN. Those over which I have immediate authority, I will consider. And for those over which I have no direct authority, I will work very closely with the council … People who are most affected, give them the floor.”
Hossein insists that he “will not build on one inch of green space.” It will encourage the construction of houses on derelict sites that do not fall within the green zone, along with transport for London land. Among his supporters are Nick Candy, a real estate mogul, and his wife, Holly, an Australian-born singer.
Having joined the Conservatives eight years ago, Hossein has already seen five Conservative prime ministers enter Downing Street as a member of the party. But the only Conservative leader he talks about in particular is Margaret Thatcher.
He evades the question of whether he was attracted to the party by David Cameron's leadership, and then, criticizing Labor's reputation for diversity, states: “They failed to have a single female leader, and we had three. You can't say they were all great.” But he adds: “At least one of them was amazing. Mrs May, that's fine too. He pauses and then adds, “I'm sure Liz Truss is also very charming.” The current prime minister is “doing a good job,” he adds, before elevating his rating to “very good work.”
A possible reason for Hossein's reluctance to spend too much time praising the recent Conservative leaders becomes apparent in his following remarks.
“I know we say that Mr. Khan is unpopular in London, but there is someone even more unpopular than Mr. Khan: this is my party. If we want to win in London, we have to get some of the votes he takes for granted. Only I can do it. Only I can reach all communities in London because I have lived all lives.
“I have lived in some terrible places in London and also lived the life of KC. And Londoners will love my story.
“Conservative voters now, before July 19th, have to choose someone who can beat Sadiq Khan, who can put a huge tank on his lawn and get votes that he counts himself. taken for granted. Otherwise, he will win.”
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