Jemima Khan, the former wife of cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, has fired another salvo at the Bhutto clan, saying slain former premier Benazir Bhutto’s niece Fatima is better qualified to run her party than her teenager son Bilawal.

The “justification” for the selection of Bilawal as chairman of PPP was that only a Bhutto could provide unity within the party, Jemima wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. “If so, then why not 25-year-old Fatima Bhutto, who is arguably more qualified for the job than her teenage Facebooking cousin?” Jemima asked.

“If everything’s in a name, Fatima need not have changed hers in order to inherit. Brought up in Pakistan, unlike Bilawal, and a native speaker, she is an established writer and political commentator.

“At least she has some work experience. Benazir’s first-ever job was Prime Minister of a 160-million-strong nation,” wrote Jemima, who had often criticised Bhutto’s politics.

“It helps, in a lookist society, that Fatima is also as beautiful as her aunt and has similar tragic appeal: orphaned, like most Bhuttos, as a result of a political assassination. Fatima is also politicised and outspoken. Too much so,” she said.

“She repeatedly accused her aunt of being complicit in the murder of her father and savagely opposed Zardari. That ruled her out,” wrote Jemima, whose last article on the former premier was titled As prime minister, Bhutto did little.