Meet the City lawyer challenging Keir Starmer for his London seat at the election
City law firm Mayer Brown’s head of pro bono has been selected to stand as a Conservative candidate in Holborn and St Pancras, the home turf of the Labour leader.
It was revealed on Monday that the Tory party has chosen lawyer Mehreen Malik to compete in the upcoming election on 4 July, where she’ll challenge Sir Keir Starmer.
Malik is a lawyer at US firm Mayer Brown’s London office, having joined the firm just under four years ago. She specialises in pro-bono at the firm, and since July 2021, she heads up the firm’s pro bono’s practice in Europe.
Pro-bono work is legal advice or representation provided free of charge by a legal professionals or law firm.
Before joining the US firm in 2020, she was a senior associate at magic circle Clifford Chance, where she spent 10 years of her career in the firm’s global capital markets practice.
Before that she was a pro-bono lawyer for under a year at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and an associate at
Karanjawala & Co in India.
Outside of work, she is an advisory council to Conservative Friends of Afghanistan, a campaigner for Conservative Friends of India, while also being a member of the Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham Conservatives.
The Labour leader Starmer has held the Holborn and St Pancras seat since 2015, and in the most recent election in 2019, he won with nearly 65 per cent of the vote, after getting over 36,600 votes.
Starmer, who is bidding to become the next Prime Minister, was a human rights barrister before he went into politics. He was also the former director of public prosecutions.
Labour is on course for the biggest election victory in the party’s history, surpassing Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide. The party looks set to win as many as 422 seats, with the Tories reduced to just 140, according to YouGov analysis published on Monday.
Also running for the Holborn and St Pancras seat is Charlie Clinton for the Liberal Democrats, David Stansell for the Greens, independent Andrew Feinstein and Dave Roberts for the Reform UK.