The Lib Dem MP Who Took Ex-Offenders To Work In Trump's Embassy
10 min read
Lib Dem rising star Josh Babarinde talks to Harriet Symonds about marching against the Coalition, his friendship with Labour’s prisons minister and taking ex-offenders into the US embassy. Photography by Tom Pilston
Josh Babarinde has two answers to the question of why he joined the Liberal Democrats – one funny, one punchy. It’s a mix that could someday make him leader.
The funny one is that he’s only here for the beer. Or more precisely he’s only a Lib Dem because of a beer mat. “They had a really awesome beer mat,” Babarinde jokes. “I asked for one and they said, ‘You can’t have a beer mat unless you join’. My mate paid for me to join so I could get the beer mat, and that’s why I ended up in the party.” Babarinde, now 31, was just 17 at the time and studying for his A-levels.
My mate paid for me to join so I could get the beer mat, and that’s why I ended up in the party
The serious answer for why he joined the Lib Dems comes across in a story of when then-leader Nick Clegg visited Eastbourne in 2009 to help local candidate Stephen Lloyd get elected.
“There was a guy behind us who was asking some really xenophobic questions, and I didn’t like the tone at all. When this event ended, I had it out with him. This town hall empties, and it’s just me and my mates and this guy arguing.
“The then Lib Dem candidate came over, Stephen Lloyd. We’d met once before, and he remembered. I was quite impressed, and he basically broke up this fight and said, in a nutshell, ‘Don’t get mad. Get even. The way you can get even is by getting involved. Here’s my card. This is what I stand for. Come and help me win.’ And so, I did.”
Babarinde meets The House just hours after being handed the keys to his new parliamentary office. He wears a striking green suit that he later reveals was a treat he bought himself after being stood up on a date.
The new Eastbourne MP was born and raised locally – “the sunniest town in the UK”, he calls it. His parents split up when he was young and, although both remained in Eastbourne, he spent more time with his mother. This meant growing up in a home with domestic abuse.
“Mum had a partner who was super abusive at home in every way – in some ways towards my mum, in some ways towards me – and that was really, really difficult. Home wasn’t safe for us.”
Babarinde grew up quickly, becoming a father figure to his five younger half-siblings. “I found myself helping them with homework, going to sports days, Christmas plays, parents’ evenings, to hear about how they were doing, to go and cheer them on.”
His life could have ended up very differently without the positive influence of his community, he says.
“I was lucky to have the community that I had when many young people don’t. I’ve met young people who would say, ‘Look, I don’t want to deal drugs’. Or: ‘I don’t want to steal bikes, but I do it so I can make cash to secretly slip in my mum’s handbag week after week.’
“Now, their means were obviously terrible, criminal, and needed to be dealt with by the law, and rightly so. But their hearts and their aspirations when it came to income, belonging, self-worth, family were not dissimilar to anybody else’s. It felt to me extremely unfair that luck should play such a huge role in shaping people’s respective courses and qualities of life.”
As a London youth worker, Babarinde saw first-hand the challenges young offenders were up against and what would help to reduce their propensity to re-offend. In 2015 he set up Cracked It, a smartphone repair company that employed young ex-offenders to help them out of a life of crime and into employment.
“The problem was I had no idea how to repair a phone and absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, intrinsically, but I’m a pragmatist and a pretty relentless guy, so I sought to teach myself how to do it.”
He set up a stall at Spitalfields Market. The company name was written in sharpie, each letter on a separate A4 piece of paper, taped to the front of the stall. “I look back on it now, and I think, to be honest, it was a bit of a shitshow,” admits Babarinde. “In a couple of cases the phone didn’t come back on, and I had to take it to another phone repair shop to get it repaired before the customer came back.”
But Cracked It went on to host phone repair pop-ups for big businesses and government departments. “We fixed the phones in Barclays headquarters, Lloyd’s headquarters, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Transport, the US Embassy under [Donald] Trump. Under Trump’s presidency, we took guys who had convictions, for like wielding axes, into his embassy to repair diplomats’ phones. It was awesome.”
New prisons minister James Timpson – who headed the Timpson Group, best-known for hiring ex-offenders, before entering government – helped Babarinde set up the company. “I was connected with him through a mutual friend, Edwina Grosvenor, who is a prison reformer. She said, ‘You’ve got to talk to James.’ So I had a call with him. He was awesome at Timpson. They do phone repairs as well, so he gave me a few tips.”
Now friends, Babarinde says: “I WhatsApped him on the day, or day after, he became a minister saying: ‘Massive congratulations. I’m also a parliamentarian now and I look forward to collaborating with you’.”
Criminal justice reform will be a priority in Parliament for Babarinde, who is keen to work with Labour on the issue. “There’s wholesale reform required, and I think that James Timpson, as someone who has been chair of the Prison Reform Trust, someone who has direct experience of rehabilitating ex-offenders, is an inspired appointment.”
He is reluctant to support Labour’s plans for early release, however. A bid to tackle overcrowding, the plan will see certain prisoners freed after serving just 40 per cent of their sentence. “People who commit a crime should serve their time,” the Lib Dem MP insists, “but what’s critical is that that’s paired with rehabilitation.”
Reflecting on the government’s response to violent riots that took place across the country following the killing of children in Southport, Babarinde says: “I think it’s right that the government comes down on it like a ton of bricks and swift justice that we have seen. The Prime Minister coming out and saying, ‘if you engage with this and you commit crime you will be dealt with’ within a week is a strong message.”
At the time of writing, there have been more than 1,000 arrests and 667 rioters charged. The speedy, tough reaction prompted accusations from some quarters that Keir Starmer was presiding over “two-tier policing” – but Babarinde rejects this idea.
“It is dangerous to undermine key institutions of the state, and those on the right have form in doing this. You had them undermine judges and our justice system, especially during those turbulent Brexit years, and you’re having them now undermine our policing system. Whatever next?”
In the wake of the riots and amid increased threats against politicians, Babarinde says he fears for his own safety. He fishes a panic alarm out of his pocket that all new MPs have been issued with and that, if activated, will send out a rapid response unit within minutes.
As far as some are concerned – far-right rioters – people who look like me are kind of fair game
“I’m walking around with a panic alarm in my pocket, and getting emails from the Speaker or the House authorities about being vigilant, speaking with the police about my safety and security, especially at this sensitive time when, as far as some are concerned – far-right rioters – people who look like me are kind of fair game,” he says.
“It’s humbling to do this job. It’s also humbling to know that one of my predecessors was murdered for doing this job.” In 1990 the incumbent Eastbourne MP, Conservative Ian Gow, was assassinated by the IRA who planted a car bomb outside his home.
“I’ve had incidents where a couple of years ago there were some threatening videos that were sent over, and that person turned up at the office and made threatening remarks to my team as well. We called the police but it’s all too common. It’s especially bad for people of colour – but it’s even worse for women of colour.”
Those close to him have become more aware of the dangers. “Even my family are feeling like they need to be a bit more vigilant, which makes me really sad because this is my decision to enter this role, not theirs.”
Babarinde enters Parliament at a high point for the Liberal Democrats, who now have more MPs than ever before. But just nine years ago the party returned only eight MPs in a punishing result following its time in the Coalition government.
Speaking of the party’s time in power, he says: “There’s a lot to be proud of, but there are a bunch of things – like tuition fees – that I didn’t agree with, and I made my voice heard.” Indeed, Babarinde quickly found himself marching on Whitehall to protest the government he had just helped elect.
“I had just campaigned for the Liberal Democrats in the 2010 election, returned a Liberal Democrat MP, and then one of the first things that the government did was vote to treble the cap on fees.
“I wasn’t a fan of that, so I took to the streets to protest on the day that the vote was taking place and went to lobby a couple of Lib Dem MPs,” he recalls, pointing outside his office window down to the street he marched on.
The following year Babarinde started to study politics and government at LSE, narrowly escaping the fee rise that came into force in 2012.
Labour is reportedly considering a tuition fee hike to tackle the university funding crisis. Babarinde will not say whether he would oppose the policy: “I’ve not seen any proposal, so show me the proposal and I’ll take a view.”
On gender, often difficult territory for politicians, he is more straightforward. “We’re pretty clear in our manifesto that trans women are women. I believe that,” says Babarinde, who is gay. “We ultimately land in a position where everybody is safe, and where trans people have the rights that they deserve and that they are honoured.”
But his party struggles with its position on housebuilding, another tricky area, with the Lib Dems often accused of maintaining ambitious targets in theory while opposing local development in practice.
Babarinde insists that the only way to resolve the housing crisis is “to build our way out”. In fact, the MP tells The House he is the ultimate Yimby: he has agreed to a house being built in his back yard – literally. “I live in a flat but there’s a back garden, and the owner of the building has proposed to build a house there – I’m all for it. So yes, in my back yard, build a house.”
His interest in housing doesn’t end there: Babarinde reveals his favourite TV show is Selling Sunset on Netflix. “I love it,” he says. “I’m a sucker for reality TV.” Set in LA, the show is about the dramatic lives of luxury real estate brokers who sell multi-million-dollar homes to the rich and famous.
Despite only being elected in July, Babarinde is frequently cited as a rising star in the party. With his easy charisma and impressive life story, it is clear why some Lib Dems are already floating the idea of him succeeding Ed Davey.
Does Babarinde see himself as a future leader? “That’s a crazy question,” he says. “If I can take some of my insights from Eastbourne, some of my insights from my career, to help make a national impact within our party, then it would be an honour.”
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