“Chingford Corbynite” Faiza Shaheen reselected as Labour candidate for Chingford and Woodford
Faiza Shaheen has been reselected as the Labour Party’s candidate in the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency.
Ms Shaheen received more than 200 votes from local members. Her main challenger, Bilal Mahmood, who was backed by MPs including Stella Creasy and David Lammy, received just over 160.
Ms Shaheen stood in Chingford and Woodford Green in the 2019 General Election, but was defeated by the Conservative MP, Iain Duncan Smith, who won with a majority of 1,263 votes.
Prior to the 2019 election, Ms Shaheen became known for her close relationship with Mr Corbyn, and was dubbed the “Chingford Corbynite”.
Ms Shaheen has also campaigned with the controversial left-wing filmmaker, Ken Loach, and made statements supporting Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, the controversial Media Officer of the antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation Jewish Voice for Labour.
In 2018, footage emerged in which Ms Shaheen appeared to say that it was “not a fact” that the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist attack, in which eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group, Black September, was motivated by antisemitism. Ms Shaheen denies these claims.
In a BBC Newsnight interview immediately following the 2019 election, in which she appeared alongside the veteran Labour politician, Jack Straw, Ms Shaheen claimed that the media had told “lies” about Mr Corbyn’s character in order to misrepresent him to the public and appeared to dismiss Mr Straw’s assessment of antisemitism allegations in the Labour Party and the role they played in the election defeat.
however, in a recent interview with Jewish News, Ms Shaheen said that “every member, including myself, must make all efforts to repair the trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community.”
She also said that she had “criticised the Corbyn leadership for not taking antisemitism seriously enough, and I think [current Labour leader, Keir] Starmer must do more too.”
Ms Shaheen’s selection has been celebrated on Twitter by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Emily Thornberry, and Labour MP for Ilford North, Wes Streeting. Mr Streeting has also claimed that the current Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, consulted him about possibly leaving the Shadow Cabinet while the antisemite Jeremy Corbyn was Leader. Whether or not such a consultation took place, Sir Keir went on to remain in Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet and back him “100%”.
The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
