Faiza Shaheen, the candidate blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, has announced she will challenge the decision in the courts, claiming she has faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”. Citing a series of recent issues, including having a local organiser removed from her team and being blocked from producing videos blaming inflation on “corporate greed,” Shaheen claimed Keir Starmer’s party had “a problem with black and brown people”. “This campaign of prejudice, bullying and spiteful behaviour has finally been rewarded by Labour’s NEC [national executive committee] and my name has been added to the list of those not welcome in the candidate club. And it is no surprise that many of those excluded are people of colour,” she said in a statement. “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that Labour, far from being a broad church encompassing different views, has an ingrained culture of bullying, a palpable problem with black and brown people, and thinks nothing of dragging a person’s good name through the mud in pursuit of a factional agenda, with no thought of the impact on committed members’ mental health and wellbeing.” Shaheen’s campaign team said she had instructed a lawyer, and was seeking to challenge her exclusion on Wednesday by a panel of Labour’s ruling NEC. Labour’s rule book says members are “entitled to dignity and respect and to be treated fairly” by the party. The leftwinger, who stood in the north-east London seat in 2019, is an academic who specialises in the study of inequality. She grew up in the constituency. Shaheen said she was given five and a half hours’ notice of an NEC panel meeting on Tuesday to discuss her social media activity. “My husband was at work and I undertook the interview with three members of Labour’s national executive with a crying baby on my lap, with no time to prepare, and feeling very poorly with mastitis,” she said in her statement. Shaheen was presented with a dossier of posts that she had liked on X, some dating back to 2014. The most recent was by a US academic who used the trope of the “Israel lobby” in relation to a sketch on The Daily Show in the US. Shaheen’s “like” prompted a complaint from the Jewish Labour Movement. Shaheen told BBC Newsnight on Wednesday: “It was the middle of the night, if you look at the time. I was probably with the baby, breastfeeding. I don’t even remember liking that tweet.” Asked whether she could see why the tweet was offensive, she said: “It plays into a trope and I absolutely don’t agree with that and I’m sorry about that.”
Shaheen was informed by email on Wednesday evening that she had been blocked from standing as a Labour candidate – a message she says she received after the news had already appeared in the media. Shaheen claimed she was unable to participate fully in the panel meeting because her five-month-old baby was crying. Diane Abbott, who has said she still hopes to stand again for Labour in Hackney North and Stoke Newington despite suggestions she too may be blocked, described Labour’s treatment of Shaheen as “appalling”. She posted on X: “Whose clever idea has it been to have a cull of left wingers?”. Shaheen had been expected to beat the Conservative candidate Iain Duncan Smith, who has represented the seat since it was created in 1997, and held its predecessor, Chingford, for five years before that. Her exclusion came as a string of more centrist members, including the director of the pro-Starmer campaign group Labour Together, Josh Simons, were installed as candidates. Labour’s internal party processes mean that if a snap election is called, as in this case, the NEC wields immense power over selections, with little or no involvement by grassroots party members. The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, denied the decisions about Abbott, Shaheen and others were being made on a factional basis. “I don’t think that’s true,” he told Times Radio on Thursday. “I mean, there are many colleagues of mine in the parliamentary Labour party who would define themselves as being on the left who are endorsed Labour party candidates standing in their constituency.” • This article was amended on 30 May 2024 to clarify the makeup of the constituency in relation to Iain Duncan Smith’s tenure; and further amended on 31 May 2024 to add more detail about the social media activity.