Blocked Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen will stand against Starmer’s party as an independent at election
Faiza Shaheen will take on Tory grandee Iain Duncan Smith as an independent candidate
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Your support makes all the difference.Blocked Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen will stand against Labour as an independent, she has announced.
She said: “I am standing as an independent candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green at the General Election on 4 July.”
The announcement comes a day after she dramatically quit Labour and accused the party of operating a “hierarchy of racism”.
Ms Shaheen has previously said she is considering legal action against Labour.
An economist, she had been set to contest the seat held by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith for Labour, with many predicting she could win on 4 July.
But last week, Labour suspended her after she liked social media posts that criticised Israel and its actions in Gaza.
Ms Shaheen resigned after the decision to block her became official, when Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) declined to nominate her.
And she alleged she had been penalised for describing her own experiences of islamophobia as she hit out at what she said was a “hierarchy of racism” in the party.
At the weekend she said she was considering standing as an independent and wanted to do it “for the right reasons”.
On Thursday night Labour selected Shama Tatler, a member of the Jewish Labour Movement, as its candidate for the Chingford and Woodford Green seat.
Earlier former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said she was a “fantastic candidate, very knowledgeable person, a great economist. People like that you need in Parliament, you don’t need to destroy their image and destroy their personality to put somebody else in their place.”
In her statement she said many local people thought Labour had handed a “winnable” seat to the Tories with its decision to block her.
She insisted her campaign would be “positive” and “forward looking” and that she wanted to show there was a “progressive alternative to both parties”.
She said she believed that constituents in the east London seat felt “disenfranchised” by the move to deselect her.
Labour has said it was focused on getting elected and “delivering the change that people in Chingford and Woodford Green and across the country need”.
A Labour spokesperson said: “We are focussed on electing a Labour government and delivering the change that people in Chingford and Woodford Green and across the country need.”
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