"One of the reasons I’ve gathered so much attention is because of failed democracy": Exclusive interview with Magid Magid

On 4 July 2018, Magid Magid, Lord Mayor and first citizen of Sheffield, issued a proclamation banning US President Donald Trump from visiting the city.

As he put it, on Twitter: “I Magic Magid, Lord Mayor and first citizen of this city, hereby declare that not only is Donald J Trump a WASTEMAN, but he is also henceforth banned from the great city of Sheffield!”

He then added: “I further declare July 13th to be Mexico Solidarity Day!”

Trump’s visit, his first to the UK as president, had been foreshadowed by talk of protest, alongside a growing sense of outrage over the prospect of UK politicians rolling out the red carpet.

Just not in Sheffield. Mexican Solidarity Day, marked by the Lord Mayor conducting his official business while wearing a massive sombrero, was aimed at highlighting failings in the President’s policy agenda. As the BBC news report puts it, “a ‘wasteman’ is slang for a person of little merit”. To celebrate, bars around the city gave out free tequila and nachos.

Magid, known to his supporters as ‘Magic Magid’, arrived in the UK as a five-year-old refugee from Somalia, via six months in an Ethiopian refugee camp. He is Sheffield’s first Somali-born mayor, its first Green Party mayor, and, having been elected at 28, also its youngest.

But while his election last May drew coverage from all around the world, it was his decision to take on Trump that sharpened focus.

The move drew complaints, with a petition launched shortly afterwards demanding he be removed from office. The grounds for his removal, as the petitioner saw it, were his insistence on “ruining the heritage of Sheffield and abusing his role as Lord Mayor by making disgraceful comments that do not bring people together”.

It said: “He’s branded Donald Trump a ‘wasteman’ and expressed political views at the Tramlines Festival in Sheffield whilst also using inappropriate language.”

It added: “A mayor that represents this city well and doesn’t make a mockery of the way he dresses for such role in office is needed and someone that isn’t in this role just to boost his own ego. As a refugee, the British welcomed him with respect and he is doing nothing to give the British people the same mutual respect.”

The reference to expressing political views at the Tramlines Festival is based on a poster he drew up beforehand for a promotion, listing ‘Ten Commandments’ for living in Sheffield. Most were safe enough – things like ‘be kind’ and ‘remember to tell your mum you love her’ – but one in particular enraged his critics: ‘Don’t kiss a Tory.’

Sitting in the Lord Mayor’s parlour eating flapjacks, Magid seems both amused and surprised by the reaction. “Oh my god, mate. The BBC ended up here doing a vox pop! It was the most shared thing at the festival, people loved it. But then I had folk asking, ‘my mum’s a Tory, are you saying I shouldn’t kiss my mum?’ I was like, ‘mate, it’s tongue in cheek, kiss whoever the hell you want to kiss.’ Then someone’s saying they won’t bring their ‘Tory money’ to the shopping centre. The news went into meltdown, making out like the whole city was divided, but it wasn’t. It was funny, and anyway, there isn’t a single Tory MP or even councillor in Sheffield.”

In the end the petition calling for his removal closed with around 6,000 signatures, while a rival one, calling him a “noble individual who cares about the city of Sheffield”, is sitting at over 17,000 – though Magid points out that most signatures on either would have come from outside the UK.

In fact, people from around the world have sent in messages congratulating him on his election and for confronting Trump, even if it was perhaps questionable how much time the US president had planned on spending in Sheffield in the first place.

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“Yeah, before he went to Doncaster and Rotherham…,” Magid starts laughing. “Of course he didn’t, he was never going to come to Sheffield, and I was aware of that. But for me it was symbolic, about sending that message. The only people that could have stopped him from coming to the country would be the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary, or someone like that. Even Sadiq Khan couldn’t stop someone from coming to London.”

He told Holyrood: “To be honest, it was just because of how I felt about Donald Trump. We knew he was coming to the UK, but as a country, by rolling out the red carpet for him, that was us legitimising everything he stands for. So when you have all these racists, and this is who they idolise, seeing him getting to meet the Queen, shaking the Queen’s hand – and I’m not a Royalist – but like, him shaking the Queen’s hand with the same hand that he talked about grabbing women with, is that what we want? Especially as a city, Sheffield, that’s known as a city of sanctuary. Of welcoming people from all over the world. I just wanted to say: listen, you’re not welcome in Sheffield.”

Magid had positive messages from a few Congressmen and Senators, and attracted interest from US media outlets, but nothing back from Trump himself, a fact he seems vaguely disappointed about.

“Well, what’s he going to say? That Sheffield’s a shithole? You know, there was actually a petition to try and get rid of me. It was done anonymously, but pushed by Breitbart [the media organisation] and others. I knew when I came into this role that I wasn’t going to betray my character. I was going to be myself, but I also thought to myself that I’m not going to please everyone, because when you please everyone, you please no one. So I thought, you know what? I’m just going to say what I believe, and people don’t expect that from someone in my role. It either pisses people off, or they absolutely love it. Of course there are people who don’t like me because of who I am or who will never like me.”

Cheerful, open, and boasting of having had no press training at all, Magid is a rare sort of politician.  Sitting in his 19th-century office, surrounded by the symbols of Lord Mayorship, the walls of the building are covered in portraits of slightly dusty-looking predecessors. Magid is wearing Doc Martens and a baseball cap. When the Holyrood photographer shifts him into position to get some headshots done, he strips off in the office to get changed.

Magid’s inauguration took place to the sound of the Imperial March from Star Wars, while his official photos – showing him crouched on the bannister of the Town Hall in official chain and Doc Martens – went viral. Laughter comes easily to him, and he is obviously amused by the fact that typing ‘Donald Trump is a…’ into Google suggests the option of ‘wasteman’. This is not what Lord Mayors normally look like.

The Lord Mayor first arrived in Sheffield on a rainy day. He was with his mum and five siblings, but, speaking no English, the family was understandably nervous about their arrival. Magid says he knew nothing about the place, but also remembers a sense of exhilaration about the prospect of a fresh start.

“There was a lot of optimism, and hope, and I remember being really excited,” he said. “But the experience I had, and the one my mum had, were completely different. I picked up the language a lot quicker than my mum, because you do at that age, you soak things up, and it got to the point that I was translating for her. Filling out forms, taking a lot of responsibility, things that other people my age wouldn’t be doing, but it was more like teamwork, to be honest. My mum was really into education and it’s stereotypical but she wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. She just wanted what was best, like any other parent would.”

The family moved to a diverse area of the city called Burngreave and Magid seemed to settle in quite quickly. “You have people from the Pakistani community, English community, Jamaican community, the Yemeni community,” he says, “and to be honest, growing up there was a lot of fun. You don’t need to be able to speak the language to play. Language isn’t a barrier. I guess I just kind of got on with [it]. The area wasn’t affluent, it was a deprived area and it had the same sort of issues you’d have in any other socially deprived area in the country in the mid-90s and early 2000s – anti-social behaviour, drugs, all that kind of stuff.”

Magid went to secondary school there and then on to college.

“The secondary school I went to was 80 per cent ethnic, so if you were white English at my school, you were the minority. But I remember going to a sixth form which was on the other side of the city, and it was 99 per cent English white, and it was really interesting. That was when I found out they have these weird sports like lacrosse. I was watching people running around with these sticks, like, what is this?

“Anyway, long story short, I flopped that year and went to college. I don’t think I flopped because of the ethnic makeup of the school or anything, I think there were many different factors. Not enjoying where I was. After that I went to college and did A-Levels.”

After college he got a job and saved money to travel, embarking on a trip covering the Swiss alps, followed by Sudan, Egypt, Zanzibar, Tanzania and some of the Middle East. Then he went to Hull to study marine zoology – a decision seemingly driven by an interest in scuba diving – before getting involved in student politics.

“I’d never been to Hull before but I knew it was a choice between that and some far off place, like Southampton or something, and I wanted to stay in the north. But I had an amazing time, and I think that’s when I started to get more of an interest in politics.

“My engagement in politics came from a sports background. Before I went to university I was doing a lot of Brazilian jujitsu, which involves a lot of submissions, and a bit of wrestling. I wanted a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) society to join, but there wasn’t one, so I joined the Come Dine with Me society.

“But there was no MMA club, so in my first year I planned it, then at the start of my second one we launched the club. I did Thai kickboxing but my main background was Brazilian jujitsu, and I won a lot of my fights through submission, and that’s where my nickname came from – ‘Magic Magid, the Submission Magician’.”

And while some might assume it was the experience of fleeing a warzone and arriving in the UK as a refugee that politicised Magid, apparently, it was the politics surrounding the sports clubs.

He said: “Of course I always knew I was different. I knew my mum was different, because she wore a headscarf. I saw how differently she was treated because of the headscarf. For me, it was a case of seeing a lot of injustices, but realising I was in a fortunate situation, where I was safe, and could bring about some change. That did have an effect.”

But, still, it was the sports club that pushed him into politics. As he puts it, in typically blunt terms: “We would always get the shit training times and I was pretty frustrated by that.”

That frustration eventually drove him to run to be student union president. “I was never political. Honestly, at university I couldn’t have told you the difference between left and right. I knew I cared about certain issues – I knew I wanted to stand up for free education and eliminate the hidden costs of university – but politics was neither here nor there.”

So why join the Greens?

“It was around about 2014, when UKIP was doing really well, that I kind of got more aware, more involved. You know that idea, if you don’t do politics, politics will do you? I was tired of complaining. That’s when I joined the Green Party.

“I knew the Green Party weren’t going to run parliament any time soon but at least I knew where they stood. They had a red line against austerity, they stood up for free education, they wanted to keep the NHS free, whereas with Labour, it didn’t seem clear cut. Other parties just flip-flopped, there was nothing coherent about them, but the thing that really frustrated me with the mainstream political parties, it’s always the people at the top that decide what the policy is. Everything trickles down and everyone else has to accept it. So one moment you can have Tony Blair and the next you can have Jeremy Corbyn, completely different sorts of values and principles and everything, but they are in the same party and can dictate policy. With the Greens, it’s the members that decide party policy, it’s more inclusive, and people at the top are just there to represent and reflect that.”

From Magic Magid the Submission Magician to Lord Mayor of Sheffield, he has clearly been on a journey.

The role is largely ceremonial, with Magid chairing full council meetings – he has started bringing in entertainment at half time to keep everyone motivated – while also acting as an ambassador for Sheffield, representing the city as its first citizen.

The first refugee to become Lord Mayor. The first Green. The youngest mayor in the city’s history. Magid’s case is remarkable, and not least because of his seemingly innate knack for attracting publicity. And while the photo requests seem to be quite time-consuming, he insists he makes an effort for anyone who comes to talk to him. “The moment I don’t is when they remember and slate me, ‘I met Magid one time and he was a prick,’” he laughs. “That’s the sort of thing that goes round.”

He adds: “You know, I genuinely think one of the reasons I’ve gathered so much attention is because of failed democracy. The people in power, whether in local or national government, who are meant to lead us, they don’t reflect the people they represent. If we had more women, more people from the LGBT community, more people of colour in our political mix, then it wouldn’t be a surprise that someone like me getting to the position I am at.”

That’s probably true, and if a smaller percentage of those with hands on the levers of power were middle-aged white men, Magid would perhaps draw less attention. But while his election drew applause from across society – across the world, even – some of the responses have been less positive.

Has he found any of the reaction patronising? Magid remembers an appearance on the Daily Politics show where he found himself being congratulated on his success by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. In the clip, Magid runs through some of the ways he is trying to change the role, to make politics more accessible. Rees-Mogg comes next, telling Magid his success is “so refreshing”. “I’m the stuffiest stuffed shirt in town,” Rees-Mogg said. “But we need more people to pep us up, and make politics fun, and stand up for what they believe in.”

Telling the story, Magid loses his smile, at least temporarily. Describing Rees-Mogg, he said: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, ‘isn’t it great that someone like him could be Lord Mayor’. For me it was about adding a dose of reality, because my storyline is made less likely by his government’s policies. You know, we refused 3,000 child refugees from Syria because we said we don’t have enough money. Yet we can find millions of pounds to bomb Syria, which, in effect, is going to cause more child refugees.

“People are like, ‘Magid, how the fuck have you become Lord Mayor?’ and I can kind of understand. They’re so used to it being a stuffy role, and I can understand it’s a shock, but it shouldn’t be.”