FAIZA SHAHEEN flung down a defiant challenge to the Labour Party today as she launched her independent campaign in the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency.
“I am still the working-class Muslim girl who is going to annoy you,” she told a packed rally kicking off her drive to oust Tory incumbent Iain Duncan Smith.
Ms Shaheen was Labour’s adopted candidate for the seat until 10 days ago when she was brutally axed by a national panel.
But her left-wing politics and, in particular, her pro-Palestinian advocacy, had attracted the ire of Labour’s bureaucracy and the Jewish Labour Movement, which pressed for her to be dropped.
She is now standing as an independent with clearly immense backing from the community in which she grew up.
The most diverse crowd packed the launch held, appropriately enough given its revivalist atmosphere, in a local church hall.
“Faiza has given hope back to this community,” campaign organiser Mick Moore, who has followed her out of the Labour Party, told the meeting.
Labour “tells us she is not good enough. Do they think we are mugs?” he questioned.
Participants interviewed by the Star expressed anger and disgust at the party’s conduct and warm admiration for the fortitude of Ms Shaheen, mother to a three-month-old baby.
Ms Shaheen said that Labour would never understand the power of community. “This is the beginning of a new politics,” she said.
Local experts now regard the seat as a three-way toss-up between Ms Shaheen, imposed Labour candidate Shama Tatler and Mr Duncan Smith.
In other campaign developments today, it was revealed that Rotherham’s voters will not have the chance to vote Tory since its candidate dropped out at the last minute.
Since Rotherham has not taken the chance to elect a Conservative since 1931 this will likely not affect the outcome on July 4.
On the campaign trail, Labour pledged to build 20,000 new prison places while the Tories said they would put £730 million into mental health services, the sort of inversion that lends credibility to Green Party leader Carla Denyer’s TV debate jibe that Keir Starmer has indeed “changed Labour — into the Conservatives.”
Still reeling from his D-Day departure blunder, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was having to fight off rumours that he might be bundled out of office by his disgruntled party mid-campaign.
