‘It matters’: Can Bangladeshi voters in Britain impact country’s election?

Behind the fluorescent-lit glass counters, silver trays of singhara — also known as samosa — biryani and hash browns sit side by side. Two men in forest-green polo shirts, the cafe’s standard uniform, move briskly between the grill and the till, taking orders as the lunchtime crowd thickens, then thins again.

Inside Casablanca Cafe, the scrape of faux-leather chairs mixed with low conversation competes with traffic and the occasional siren on Whitechapel Road.
Some customers hurry through plates of chicken curry and rice during short breaks from nearby offices; others linger over fried eggs, beans and toast, chatting before heading next door for prayers at East London Mosque.

At a worn wooden table in the centre of the room, Khaled Noor cradles a tall glass of ginger and honey tea. For months now, he says, Bangladesh’s upcoming election has been a constant topic of conversation.

“Since the elections were announced,” Noor, a barrister and political scientist, said, “people haven’t stopped talking about it.”

A long-awaited vote
The vote, scheduled for February 12, will be Bangladesh’s first national election since the removal of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and the first in nearly two decades expected to feature genuine competition. It follows years of tightly managed polls, opposition boycotts and allegations of repression under Hasina that left many voters at home disillusioned and deepened frustration among Bangladeshis overseas who had long been excluded from the ballot.
Bangladesh’s politics has long been shaped by rivalry between the Awami League, led for years by Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by former military ruler Ziaur Rahman and later led by his widow, Khaleda Zia. Under Hasina, Bangladesh saw rapid economic growth alongside deepening accusations of authoritarianism and repression.

The BNP, sidelined for much of the past decade, is seeking to reassert itself under the leadership of Khaleda Zia’s son, Tarique Rahman. Supporters portray Rahman, who spent 17 years in exile in London, as a symbol of resistance to one-party dominance; critics point to past convictions and accusations of corruption. The election will be the first since Khaleda Zia’s death in December, lending additional emotional and symbolic weight to the contest.

Meanwhile, the interim administration under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, which took charge after Hasina’s ouster, has banned her Awami League from electoral politics.

Amid all of that flux, Bangladeshis living abroad have, for the first time, won the right to vote. “For years we’ve been campaigning for this moment,” Noor said. “People wanted recognition.”

But at neighbouring tables in the cafe, several people decline to speak, wary of sharing political views publicly. Noor, a former local councillor, said some Bangladeshi citizens in the UK who are technically eligible to vote but lack secure immigration status are among the most cautious.

“They’re watching the elections very closely,” he said, “but they don’t want to draw attention to themselves.”

For decades, overseas Bangladeshis, despite sending billions of dollars home in remittances, had no formal say in national elections. Campaigners argued that excluding the diaspora was both undemocratic and politically expedient, particularly as many Bangladeshis abroad had left amid political violence or repression.

Following sustained pressure, electoral authorities expanded overseas voter registration, allowing expatriates to participate remotely for the first time. According to Bangladeshi election authorities, more than seven million expatriates worldwide have registered since overseas voting was introduced — making them a substantial 5 percent of the total electorate of about 127 million. Bangladesh’s election authorities estimate there are roughly 15 million Bangladeshis living abroad in all.

In the United Kingdom, however, just over 32,000 Bangladeshi citizens are registered to vote, a modest figure given the size of the wider community. According to the 2021 census, about 645,000 people in England and Wales identify as Bangladeshi or British Bangladeshi, with the largest concentration in East London. In Tower Hamlets alone, Bangladeshis make up nearly 35 percent of residents, with significant communities also in Newham, and Barking and Dagenham.