Imran Ahmad Khan liked to be noticed. Wandering around Westminster in a pinstripe suit with a cane, he looked and sounded like a Conservative MP from another era, calling colleagues “old boy” and “dear chap”, despite only being in his 40s – “like a tinpot Churchill”, as one of his colleagues puts it. He was prone to ostentatious displays of wealth, sometimes parking a Rolls-Royce in the parliamentary car park.
In his 2019 victory speech he paid special tribute to his mother, whom he called “ma-mah”, like a member of the royal family. He is close to his family, particularly his brothers Karim and Khaled, both lawyers, the former a prosecutor at the international criminal court in The Hague.
After becoming Wakefield’s first Conservative MP since 1932, Khan, a keen Brexiter, quickly garnered a reputation as an oddball with a questionable grasp on reality. One Conservative MP recalled an early meeting of the 2019 intake in Downing Street, where the new MPs were being briefed on the Brexit negotiations.
“My overriding memory of Imran is him piping up: is there no chance we could threaten to close the straits of Denmark [which connect the Baltic Sea to the North Sea] as a negotiating position? The Spad there wrote it down and made a note to never trust this man with anything ever again,” the MP said.
Khan had an exhibitionist streak, responding to a criticism that he had been “parachuted” into Wakefield as a last-minute candidate for the 2019 general election by jumping out of a plane and parachuting into the West Yorkshire city for a public appearance.
Though friends knew he was gay, he tried to keep his sexuality a secret. Shortly after his election win he forced a correction from the Conservative LGBT+ group for saying he was the first openly gay Muslim to be elected in the UK.
“We are incorrect to describe him as an ‘out’ LGBT candidate,” the group wrote, explaining that an “application was made in his name to the LGBT+ Conservatives candidates’ fund”, but Ahmad Khan insisted the application had been made in error. He acknowledged only during his trial that he was in fact gay.
Born in Wakefield to a doctor and nurse at the local hospital, he was not the Tories’ first choice to contest the seat. He got the call only when the original candidate had to withdraw a month before polling day after journalists dredged up his offensive Facebook history.
Corners may well have been cut in the vetting process as a result. The main complainant in his sexual assault trial testified he had tried to warn the Conservatives about Khan before his election, saying the prospective MP had abused him when he was 15.
The complainant says he was not taken seriously and so went to the police instead. But delays in the investigation meant Khan was able to win his parliamentary seat with a 3,358 majority and serve 18 months before he was eventually charged, prompting his suspension from the Conservative party.
