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London, United Kingdom | AFP | A British lawmaker has postponed giving birth in order to vote on Britain’s divorce deal with the EU on Tuesday.
Tulip Siddiq, 36, was due to have a Caesarian section on Tuesday but medics have agreed to delay the operation until Thursday so that she can vote on the withdrawal agreement struck between London and Brussels.
She plans to be pushed through the division lobby in parliament in a wheelchair.
Colleagues in the main opposition Labour Party asked John Bercow, the speaker of the lower House of Commons, if Siddiq could have a proxy vote.
Bercow said he would like the procedure known as “nodding through” — where an MP who is on the parliamentary estate but physically unable to cast their ballot has their vote counted — extended to Siddiq’s hospital bed.
But he said while he was happy for her to be nodded through, it was not in his gift to extend a proxy vote.
Siddiq said she asked medics at the Royal Free Hospital in her north London constituency if she could change the procedure date to Thursday, which they agreed to.
“If my son enters the world even one day later than the doctors advised, but it’s a world with a better chance of a strong relationship between Britain and Europe, then that’s worth fighting for,” she told the London Evening Standard newspaper.
The boy will be a great-grandson of the founding father of Bangladesh.
Siddiq is the grand-daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh.
Her aunt is Sheikh Hasina, who was sworn in as Bangladesh’s prime minister for a record fourth term last week after a crushing election victory marred by deadly violence and claims of widespread rigging.
