The wall outside Ilhan Omar’s office is not like that of other members of Congress. In Washington DC, a blank corridor of congressional offices gives way, outside the door to the office of the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, to a collage of cards, notes and handwritten posters offering variations on the slogan “We stand with Ilhan”. The 37-year-old, who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and spent four years in a refugee camp before fleeing with her family to the US, has for the last year been the target of vicious rightwing attacks, not least by President Trump. In July this year, he suggested she and three other women of colour – members of the so-called Squad of progressives newly elected to Congress – should “go back” to the “places from which they came”. In some ways, Omar is the most visible of the four: she is the first person ever to wear a hijab in Congress.

Tan Dhesi, Labour MP for Slough, understands the law of firsts: the 41-year-old is the first member of parliament to wear a turban and, like Omar, has a reputation for speaking out against anti-Muslim sentiment in government. In September, during prime minister’s questions, Dhesi called on Boris Johnson to apologise for his remarks about Muslim women looking like “letterboxes” which, to cheers from the chamber, he called “derogatory and racist”.

The two politicians meet for the first time in November via Skype – Dhesi from his constituency office, Omar from Washington DC. As minority ethnic members of government, the MP and the congresswoman are both keenly aware of what is at stake in their respective countries’ forthcoming elections, and of what happens when political rhetoric lurches to the right. Both are campaigning on broad platforms for better welfare provision, less restrictive immigration policy and deeper government efforts to combat racism. Omar has had to confront accusations of antisemitism, after a tweet uncovered from 2012referred to Israel, in its actions in Gaza, as having “hypnotized the world”. She has since apologised for inadequately “disavowing the antisemitic trope I unknowingly used”.

These are difficult times and the two politicians seek, in their discussion, to reach across the Atlantic in a spirit of progressive solidarity. They discuss the experience of standing up to their country’s leaders; of the role played by family background in their ability to represent marginalised communities; and of what it’s like simply to look different from everyone else in one’s workplace – as well as the question of whether Omar might be persuaded, one day, to visit Dhesi in Slough, a suggestion she greets with warm if somewhat baffled enthusiasm.

Tan Dhesi I was very touched when I heard we were going to do this. I thought, oh, brilliant.

We’re in the middle of a general election here, so let’s see how that works out!

Ilhan Omar What is the timeline for your elections?

TD It should be every five years, but because the Conservatives lost their majority, they got forced into an election after only two and a half. I’ve only been a member of parliament for that long.

IO And so everybody has to stand for re-election?

TD Yes. So I am no longer a member of parliament – I’m a candidate. Hopefully we can be part of the sea change, and it’ll be a Labour government this year. Then come next year, you guys are in, yeah?

We’re cheering for a change to happen in England!

IO Oh my God, I can’t even begin to dream about that. We’re cheering for a change to happen in England. And since my journey has been covered quite a lot – and it’s been a wild one – maybe you can tell me a little bit about what got you interested in being a part of government and a public servant?

TD I was born and brought up here in the Slough area, but I actually studied in the Punjab, in India, for four years when I was young; my primary schooling was there, then I came back to the UK.

IO Where in Punjab? I don’t know if you knew this about me, but I’m a huge Bollywood fan.

TD No way!

IO So I feel like I’ve been to India, even though I haven’t.

TD Well, I look forward to welcoming you to our ancestral village out there. We’re near a city called Jalandhar: it’s the hub of bhangra music. I went to university in Scotland, then returned down south. Since university I’ve been a member of the Labour party. Then I became an elected councillor, then mayor of the town. And after about a decade, I became a member of parliament for Slough, where my parents emigrated in the 70s. Little could they have imagined their son would go on to become the MP for that town.

IO That’s amazing. So we have a little bit of that in common. I worked for a city council member in the city of Minneapolis.

TD Where were you born and brought up?

IO I was born in Somalia, in the capital city, and I lived there for eight years. Then the civil war happened, and my family had the misfortune of being the clan that was being cleansed, and we were chased out. We fled to Kenya and lived in a refugee camp for four years, before getting the opportunity to come to the US in 1995. So I’ve been here for over two decades now.

My interest has always been around the expansion of democracy; my family was born into colonised Somalia and had been part of a generation that had fought to gain independence and was distraught when dictatorship fell on the country after just seven years of democratic government. My grandfather, who helped raise me, was very excited to come to the US and participate in democracy, so at the age of 14 I would accompany him to vote and translate for him. He understood democracy but he didn’t understand the language to access it. And I hated the fact that in a country that, on paper, had all of these rights extended to its citizens, in actuality had ways of limiting people’s access. So my work became trying to make our country live up to its ideals, and shift the current reality for all of us.

It was really daunting to be a young refugee kid who was also Muslim and black to come to the US – the land of opportunity – and realise for the first time that every identity of mine that I’d been so proud of was held in contempt by many of my neighbours. I understood early on that the excitement my grandfather had about this country was enshrined in the constitution, and that it was up to all of us to make sure we had equal access to those guaranteed rights.

My organising work has been around fighting economic inequality, and trying to make sure we’re not just being tolerant, but being an accepting and welcoming country for all. I’ve also dealt with a lot of the issues around police brutality, our mass incarceration problems, and our inability to care for our most vulnerable. It’s been an interesting journey.

TD The good thing is we share our politics – if I was talking to one of your Republican colleagues, this conversation would be more difficult!

IO In the US, the majority of the challenges I face are people pointing out I should be grateful. I’m an immigrant to this country and it has welcomed me, and I should count my blessings and never point out any differences between the reality and the ideal.

I don’t know if there is pushback [in the UK] when you talk about the inequalities that persist?

We don't get elected because we’re different. We get elected because we speak to the challenges our constituents face

TD Things have improved a lot since the days when our grandparents or our parents immigrated here. My grandparents – my mum’s parents – came in the 60s, then my dad in the 70s. Mum and Dad got married and had to face a lot of discrimination: somebody wearing a turban couldn’t drive a bus in the UK; they couldn’t ride a motorcycle; they couldn’t do many things in terms of a day job. So there was a struggle there.

But thankfully there was also [support] from some people who had seen, for example, how the Sikh communities were preponderant within the British Indian army. Before 1947, Sikhs made up 20% of the army and the British Indian army constituted the largest volunteer army ever; more than one and a half million people fought during the first and second world wars. And because of that, many [British people in power] were sympathetic, so they helped those activists, as well as people on the left in the Labour party, to change the laws.

While most of my life at school was positive, there were negatives. You’d have racist incidents – for example, someone tried to pull off my turban.

IO Yeah, they would put gum on my hijab, or try to pull it off when I was in school.

TD Something like that dents your self-confidence. And it takes you days, sometimes weeks, to recover. But we were strong; whether it’s inner self-confidence or that we are able to focus on the positives, it’s made us stronger. It’s important that we didn’t let those incidents scar us. You’ve got a minority of people who are haters, who just don’t like us or are not accepting. Because the word “tolerant”, like you said, is not the same as “accepting”. It’s we’re “tolerating” you.

IO Yes. “We put up with it.” This is our country as well. We don’t get to be made to feel like guests. Was there a law that needed to be changed for you to have your turban as a member of parliament?

TD No.

IO You’re luckier than I am!

TD So many similarities. You were the first hijabi within the US Congress, and there had never been a single person wearing a turban in the British or European parliament. In our own way, we helped to break a glass ceiling.

But I tell you what, for the most part my Labour colleagues are a very diverse set. There are people who’ve worked in a whole array of industries, but they were very helpful, and showed me the various parliamentary protocols. I don’t know how it is in your Congress, but in ours, everything you say has to be addressed via the Speaker.

IO It’s the same here. You get censored if you address the member. You have to address the Speaker.

TD I think there is a sense that in many of these institutions, you’ve got elite people who are detached from reality, and it’s more of an issue among the Conservatives here, some of whom, I think, would find it very difficult [to understand] what the average Joe has to face out on the street. Is it the same there?

IO Yes. The majority of people [in Congress] are millionaires; the majority are over 50; and the majority are white. And so our lived experience, as Congress as a whole, is very different to the majority of the people we represent. That’s why I talk a lot about needing people to be in these rooms who have fluency in the day-to-day struggles of the people they seek to represent. It’s not enough that we have diverse faces and voices; it also needs to be diverse lived experiences. For example, someone who took at least 10 years to complete a four-year degree – I understand that because I had two young babies right out of high school.

TD Oh, right. How many children have you got?

IO I have three.

TD I’ve only got two.

IO Yes, so to speak to the challenges that many of our young families are facing: they have to make a choice about going back to school, getting that degree in order to have the prosperity or maintain a job to be able to feed themselves. We’re struggling here to raise the minimum wage to $15 (£12). All of these challenges are things I’ve had to live with, and folks in my neighbourhood had to live with – they’re not just a story someone tells me – so I’m more urgent in addressing them. And even trying to make sure I could sit as a member of Congress – because I was going to be the first person to wear a hijab, and we had a 181-year ban on headscarves. I was contemplating what it would look like for me to walk into a majority Republican caucus and them not allow me to sit.

These are the kind of fears that some people have in trying to run for office. It’s not just the tolerance or respect they might get from their constituents in sending them [to Washington]; it’s also having to deal with what you will face once you get there. Because the powers that be get to control the narrative, and have the rules tilted in their favour.

TD I tell you what, I’m very, very proud of being part of this parliament, the most diverse ever.

IO Same here.

TD We’ve got more women, more ethnic minorities, more LGBT people, more people with disabilities than ever before, and a large part of that is because of the Labour party: 46% of all our MPs are women; we’ve more minorities than the other parties and we are helping to push that agenda. What’s happening in France [where wearing headscarves is banned in schools and other public institutions] is what you might call a warped interpretation of secularism that causes greater segregation, rather than integration. Unfortunately, on the continent in Europe, things are becoming more and more rightwing.

One of the really negative things about being in opposition is we can’t implement our radical transformative policies

IO They certainly are and I wanted to thank you for your impassioned speech in parliament. It’s important we recognise that when someone is being harassed because they are Muslim, the Sikh community is not going to be safe, and any other religious minority is not going to be safe. And we see that here in the US; as Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate rhetoric have grown, the people that have been endangered are the people who look like Muslims, which is the Sikh community.

The French situation – I didn’t understand how tragic it was until I met a young woman who was Muslim, who was newly elected to a city council in France and came to Minnesota as part of a delegation. She had her headscarf on and I walked in with my hijab, and she started crying. I was running five minutes late and I thought I had disrespected her, so I was, like, I’m sorry, I had to drop off my kids, I didn’t mean to be late! And she said no, no, that’s not why I’m crying! I’m crying because I saw pictures of you with your hijab, but I didn’t imagine your country would allow you to actually walk into the House of Representatives wearing it. And she said she wore her hijab everywhere in the community, except when she has to represent them.

TD Which is absolutely ridiculous.

IO And I think this sort of demoralising, dehumanising exercise is contrary to what they’re trying to accomplish. If you are trying to create a more accepting, freeing society, then you can’t limit the right to express oneself.

When I was growing up in Somalia, it was very secular, in all the wrong ways. People were banned from wearing the hijab; that used to be the model in Turkey, as well. And what it did was create a whole society that was ready to rebel. And now we see that [spirit] being exploited by the religious fanatics who have done a 180-degree turn in Somalia, where now everyone is forced to wear a hijab. And I think there is a danger, any time you try to impose secularism or religious doctrine on people. Humans need to be allowed to freely exist as they want. We need to be tolerant of people’s wishes.

TD I think that is one of the reasons why I felt I had to call out the prime minister. It is diabolical that the most powerful person [in the country] can target women from one part of our community and say, you look like letterboxes or bank robbers. Because it makes them more susceptible to hate crime.

I read that you won your seat by the largest majority of any woman in Congressional history. What did that feel like?

IO It’s what we’re able to do when we build these amazing grassroots movements. We increased voter turnout by 100,000 in our district, and were able to break state and national records. And what I tell my colleagues who want to censor me for speaking out about human rights and holding people accountable is that we are not asking for permission. We’re not asking for people to give us the right to speak on behalf of our constituents. Of the 435 members of Congress, I got the seventh highest number of votes. I’m quite proud of that.

TD You should be!

I just endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. I’m hopeful we’ll see real structural change

IO It speaks to the work we put in. It’s not that we get elected because we’re different and special and interesting. We get elected because we speak to the heart of the challenges many of our constituents face. We are hopeful about the kind of changes that can be created once we collectively leverage our voice and power. This movement being built by the Labour party and progressive members of Congress is one that’s going to sustain us. Because the solidarity of working people, of people who live on the margins of society, is a powerful one, and that’s why the powers that be do everything they can to find ways to kill our reputations, to marginalise our voices, to diminish the kind of work we’re putting in every single day – as we knock on doors and talk to constituents about what’s really important.

TD Definitely. We’ve got the people power in terms of spending hours and hours on the doorsteps. It’s a shame the election’s in winter.

IO We always have elections in the winter and I’m from Minnesota! [Laughs.]

TD Given our majorities, we can’t be accused of just having sneaked in. We’ve got a mandate and we can talk about the issues we want to talk about. I think one of the really negative things about being in opposition is that we can’t implement our radical transformative policies. But you’ve got longer to wait; what’s it like? Is it frustrating?

IO It really is. But we take solace in the fact that we’re able to create a new narrative about what’s possible. We have been able to implement a people’s agenda, because we are in the majority. I just endorsed Bernie Sanders for president, so I’m hopeful that we can get him into office and see the structural changes we’ve been after. I’m excited.

It’s been a complete joy to catch up with you, and to have a virtual meet and greet, and I look forward to an opportunity to have tea in my office, or in yours, in the near future.

TD Definitely! I look forward to hosting you!

[We caught up with the pair after the election, in which Dhesi held his seat. How were they feeling?]

IO The result is an indication of how effective xenophobic rhetoric can be. The far right is on the rise in ways we haven’t seen in decades. But it’s important not to draw too broad a comparison: the UK is not the US and the Conservatives are not the Republicans. Here, we still don’t have universal healthcare, we still have a president who denies climate change.

TD While I was pleased with our result in Slough, I was deeply disappointed with the national result. Brexit, the personality of party leaders and the fanning of nationalism caused us significant losses, although we had some success with our message around the NHS and protecting public services. Now we need to re-group and start the fightback.

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