Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is a former barrister with a passion for weightlifting. She can deadlift 105kg with ease – and is fearless in telling hecklers where to go
Once she dreamed of becoming Kavanagh QC, but Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood might be better cast as the Terminator. For the MP for Birmingham, Ladywood – a former barrister – is honing her skills as a weightlifter and can deadlift 105 kg (16-and-a-half stone). Speaking at London’s Duchess Theatre, when Shabana, 45, encountered a heckler accusing her of imitating Reform with her immigration policies, she was impressively fearless, telling him to “f*** right off.”
Unruffled, she went on to explain her penchant for weightlifting, saying: “I love weight training, so I love weightlifting. My lifetime personal best on the deadlift is 105 kilograms. It’s not bad, is it?” Her more modest workouts see her lifting 60kg (9st 4lb). She says: “I need to build myself back up to my personal best.” Talking about her hobby at an event hosted by comedian Matt Forde, for his new podcast The Political Party, she looks at him and laughs, adding: “I might be able to lift you now. I need an Olympic bar. If you lie across it, I’ll give it a shot.”
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The eldest of four children, Shabana – who has a twin brother, a software developer – is the daughter of Pakistani couple Subaida and Mahmood Ahmed, who have roots in Mirpur, Azad Kashmir. From 1981 to 1986, her dad’s job as a civil engineer took the family to Taif, Saudi Arabia. After that, they returned to Birmingham, where the couple had settled in the early 1970s and where Shabana was born, and her mum worked in a convenience shop, while her dad became chairman of the local Labour Party.
One of Britain’s first female Muslim MPs, Shabana says: “I do love weightlifting. Oh, my God. I think it was about 10, 12 years ago, I was just looking to sort of improve my health and get a bit fitter. I tried loads of things, loads of different sports and also every diet under the sun. Then I just stumbled across this profile of some women that had done weightlifting and really loved it. I thought, ‘well, I’ve never tried that. Let’s have a go.’ And I really took to it.”
As Home Secretary – a position she has held since September, 2025 – Shabana is responsible for police, immigration and border security. Regarded as a political heavyweight, she has adopted a hardline approach to immigration, which includes significant, long-term reforms to the asylum system.
But, after sparring with the opposition in Parliament – and hecklers in the audience – she likes weightlifting in her spare time, as her only competition is herself. Shabana, who is believed to be single, says: “You’re competing against yourself, which is why I really love it. And I ended up being quite good at it. When you’re good at something, it’s also quite, you know, motivating to keep going.”
Asked by Matt Forde if she’s “trying to become like the Terminator,” she replies: “Not consciously. I suppose you can read into it what you like! ” Drawn to cardio workouts, she says: “You know, running with a sled with loads of weight on it.”
Known as the prowler, the weighted sled is used to build strength and cardiovascular endurance. Shabana continues: “Sometimes my trainer, he is like really big, he’ll sometimes stand on the prowler and make me push him up and down the track. I swear my head off, but I do love it when I finish. I can’t breathe and I’m about to die, but once you’ve done it, you do feel really good.”
Turning her focus to crime, Shabana can relate to the current shoplifting epidemic, after working in her parents’ corner shop growing up. She says: “We used to get robbed all the time. We had our till nicked memorably twice.
“First it was nicked and my dad went out and actually invested and bought a really good new electronic till. It was really exciting because all the receipts were going to be coming off this roll of paper, it’s all cool. Then it got nicked within a week. I have a lot of affinity with shopkeepers today, with all of the challenges around shoplifting, because many a time we had to run after someone who just nicked like a load of chocolate bars or a big box of crisps. It was really, really frustrating. But when you’re running a small business, those things make a difference to your takings at the end of the day and you get a big dent in your family money.”
While she admits there have been big rises in “things like shoplifting, phone theft, antisocial behaviour,`’ she says: “We’ve seen good falls in numbers of violent crimes. So the number of homicides, knife homicides, all of these things are trending in the right direction. The numbers have come down and hopefully they will continue to do so. I think particularly on shoplifting that that’s been a reaction to a changed environment.”
Her heckler successfully silenced, Shabana is in the mood to deflect some other unwelcome comments – this time from a former political foe … ex-Conservative Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove. Now editor of right-wing, Eurosceptic magazine, The Spectator, he’s admitted to having a “crush” on Sabana – describing her as “gorgeous,” “principled” and ‘attractive.”
She says: “The feeling is not mutual. I think I should spare a thought for, you know, presumably his mortified actual life partner. I should also probably point out that I have highly trained, very specialist, armed police officers with me at all times. So, you know, watch yourself.. Watch out, Michael!”
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