Faiza Shaheen’s “appalling and unfair” deselection
JVL Introduction
Perspectives on the General Election (11)
Faiza Shaheen’ story is of Labour choosing to sacrifice a winnable seat for factional advantage – to get rid of a left-wing local candidate with deep roots in the community who had already built a strong base in her campaign in 2019.
Then Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative candidate scraped home with 23,481 votes, 48.5% of the vote to Faiza Shaheen’s 22,219, with 45.9%.
The seat was about to drop into Labour’s waiting arms.
Then the Jewish Labour Movement intervened. As one JLMer put it, local Jewish members were “concerned about the tone of Ms Shaheen’s tweets and her pride on being pictured with a man [can’t even bear to name him! – ed] who did so much harm to the party’s relationship with the Jewish community”.
In a flash, she was cruelly removed (watch her being interviewed on Newsnight here) and replaced by an imposed candidate who just happens to be a member of the JLM!
The outrage over Labour’s double standards is palpable – and ongoing. Just look at the appalling behaviour of Luke Akehurst, the Labour First candidate parachuted into a safe seat in North Durham, who celebrates Israel’s war crimes and is happy to identify as a “Zionist shitlord”.
RK
Perspectives on the General Election – index
(Click on images to sharpen them)
48 Labour members quit party over Shaheen deselection
SKWAWKBOX, 12th June 2024
Members inform Starmer they will be campaigning for her as an independent candidate as party’s Stalinist selection-rigging scandal continues
Almost fifty Labour members in Chingford and Woodford Green, including a councillor and several elected officers, have resigned from the party with immediate effect over its summary deselection of Faiza Shaheen as its parliamentary candidate. In a letter to Keir Starmer, they criticise the ‘appalling and unfair’ conduct of the party and inform him that they will be campaigning for her as an independent candidate against Tory Iain Duncan Smith:
Keir,
We, the undersigned, are resigning as members of the Labour Party with immediate effect.
Our democratically elected candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, Faiza Shaheen, has been deselected in an appalling and unfair manner. Faiza was selected by the constituency members in a fair and open contest, accruing more votes than the other three candidates put together. The process of deselection overturned this election result and is anti-democratic.
The deselection was carried out in a manner contrary to natural justice or any proper due process. It was inhumane and degrading and based on spurious grounds. What is particularly egregious is the fact that historic tweets when Faiza was not even a member of the party are being used against her, while over the past several weeks Labour has been happy to admit to its parliamentary party Conservative MPs who hold odious views that have been expressed repeatedly until very recently.
We are at a loss to understand the timing and manner of this deselection. We can only assume that it is a cynical ploy aimed at removing a candidate of integrity at a time when the NEC can use its powers to impose a candidate without any due process; a candidate with no roots or connection to our community and who has done none of the tireless work Faiza has carried out to bring that community
together, building connections with local residents and businesses. This is all now being thrown away by the Labour Party.
We can no longer stay in a party that treats people in this way. Not only has Faiza Shaheen been betrayed, but so have all those in the local Labour Party who voted for her candidature and the ordinary residents of the Chingford & Woodford Green constituency.
As a consequence, not only are we leaving the Labour Party, but we shall be doing all we can to support Faiza in her bid to become an Independent MP for our constituency – the only realistic and moral alternative to Sir lain Duncan Smith.
Why Labour was wrong to deselect Faiza Shaheen
LSE professors Mike Savage, Suzi Hall, Sam Friedman and Suki Ali decry the party’s action and support Shaheen running as an independent
We write as London School of Economics professors and colleagues of Dr Faiza Shaheen, one of the UK’s leading experts on inequality. We have hugely benefited from her long-term collaboration with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and especially her work this past academic year, when she was hired by the sociology department to teach graduate students on our flagship MSc inequalities and social science. Faiza used her extensive campaigning and academic experience, both in the UK and globally, to provide excellent guidance and insight to our students. Her tolerance and respect for different perspectives and openness to debate was absolutely clear.
We were completely shocked that someone with her outstanding abilities, experience and dedication was deselected as parliamentary candidate for the Labour party for Chingford and Woodford Green. The utter disrespect shown to her by the manner of this deselection, especially given her own outstanding professionalism, integrity and commitment, was appalling. As colleagues of Faiza, who can testify at first hand to her many qualities, we are in an excellent position to state that she is exactly the kind of person who would be a major asset in the House of Commons.
Given this unfortunate and mistaken deselection, we therefore fully support her campaign to run as an independent candidate (Interview, 5 June), and hope that she is victorious and will be able to take her rightful place at the heart of UK public life.
Prof Mike Savage, Prof Suzi Hall, Prof Sam Friedman, Prof Suki Ali
London School of Economics
Faiza Shaheen’s resignation statement, 4th June:
More than 50. Many party leavers are not on this letter (lack of time)
The wider context recapitulated:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/adam-shatz/israel-s-descent
Deselecting Faiza Shaheen has been another appalling and as if deliberately stupid action by the changed for the worse Labour Party, which is regularly demonstrating, for those who study the facts, that it is unfit for government.
Note MSM ignore ALL #Starmer’s machinations to oust Left Wing candidates especially if they’re critical of Israel.. his CPS career is a litany of Establishment cover ups for which he was knighted & invited to go into politics no doubt to carry on protecting that Establishment & ensure a LW government will never come even close to winning after Corbyn’s near win in 2017 when he was just 2000 votes short of a win..
Starmer is NOT the lesser evil ( unbelievably this is the best many Centrists can come up with online as they exort us to “Get the Tories out “) he is the last nail in the coffin of Labour as a left wing socialist party for the Many & any chance of REAL change & a fairer future
I think she did the right thing to stand as an independent. I think that Lloyd Russell-Moyle In Brighton Kemptown should have done so too.
The ruthless manner that she has been treated and that persons like her, are being replaced by millitant and bigoted zionists is eye opening.
Starmer is going to be our next PM. Let’s not think otherwise, however, given that Shaheen is on the right side of history; I do believe that this setup will be a strength when Starmer eventually mucks up and the public see him for what he is, and realise that Labour is no more and we all deserve better.
Very sadly, when K. Starmer becomes PM, we can expect only more victims of him, a proven liar, a scheming chancer, a friend of apartheid Israel and state terrorist in chief, the US government, who, with ruthless inhumanity, will dispense with anyone who might reasonably stand in the way of US hegemony. All efforts should be made to prevent this monster becoming PM.
Shoulders to the wheel for the election of Andrew Feinstein, at Holborn and St. Pancras!
This is Starmer getting rid of as many Socialists in the Party. It’s a pity we don’t have an honest BBC, if it was being done by Jeremy Corbyn, they’d have a well publicised Panorama programme about it.
I do hope Faiza wins in Chingford and Woodford Green. The way she has been treated by Labour is appalling. It shows the party has no respect for local democracy.
I’m already donating to Faiza’s campaign, having admired her politics for many years. How crazy to remove the candidate most likely to win!
The Starmerite candidates around the UK are an absolute horrorshow of careerist chancers, most of them known to me for their underhand machinations in Holborn and St Pancras where I live. None has the slightest talent or ability. One of the worst things about Starmer is the fragility of his ego, which leads him only to feel at ease with nonentities.
Towards the end of the communist regimes their opponents called them the ‘mediokratsitatsia’ — people with power but no ability. This can surely only indicate the downfall of the Labour party, along with its financial shortfall despite wooing (or grovelling to) so many rich donors, and taking so many freebies from corporate sponsors. There is no substitute for a genuine membership and a Cabinet of all the talents.