Who is Ali Milani?

By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Updated: December 9, 2019 1:53:54 pm

Milani is hopeful of defeating Johnson with his campaign aimed at three Hs – Hillingdon, Heathrow, and housing. (Twitter)

Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not only fighting to win a majority in Parliament in December 12 elections but he is also facing tough competition to hold his own constituency Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London. The Labour Party has pitched 25-year-old Ali Milani as its candidate against Boris Johnson.

Born in Iran, Milani moved from Tehran to London at the age of five with his mother and sister. Milani and his family lived in public housing. He attended schools on partial scholarships. Raised by a single mother, Milani studied politics at Brunel University, where he was also the student union president as well as the vice-president of National Union of Students.

As a teenager, Milani posted anti-Semitic tweets in which he had claimed Israel “had no role to exist” for which he was criticised. He later issued an apology for the same.

In 2018, Milani was elected as a councillor in the Heathrow Villages ward of the Hillingdon.

Milani is hopeful of defeating Johnson with his campaign aimed at three Hs – Hillingdon, Heathrow, and housing. Milani has pitched himself to voters as a “local candidate” who “understands their problems as he has faced them too”. Last month, Milani went door-to-door in the South Ruislip neighbourhood asking people to vote Johnson out. If elected. he will be the first person to oust a sitting British Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Johnson pushed for Britain to hold the December election, which is taking place more than two years early, in hopes of winning a majority and breaking Britain’s political impasse over Brexit. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs.

Conservative party leader Johnson has a majority of just 5,034, which makes his Uxbridge seat a key marginal. No sitting prime minister has had such a small majority since 1924, AFP reported.

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