It emerged last week that the Respect party have petitioned the High Court to challenge the general election result in the Sparkbrook constituency. The party’s candidate claims she has had enough complaints to warrant court action. I am not sure what the details of the case are, but there are reports of people turning up to vote and being told that they had already voted by post. It will certainly be interesting to see how the case proceeds.
Although George Galloway’s victory in London was well-reported on election night, the result in Sparkbrook was a bombshell of sorts too. Salma Yaqoob, the Respect candidate, lost the election but managed to turn Labour’s massive majority, greater than 16,000, to around 3,000. Should the election be declared void, Labour could find itself behind the eight ball in Sparkbrook.
I believe Respect could have won the seat in Sparkbrook if more people were convinced that they represented a credible threat to Labour. Many people made the same mistake as I did. While agreeing with the sentiments of the Respect party, there was a feeling that the Respect party was an outsider, a novice, with no prospect of defeating Labour. We thought only the Liberal Democrats could do this. We were wrong. The Respect campaigners I debated with before the election were insisting that they were sensing a massive mood change from the door steps. At the time I somewhat arrogantly thought they were misinterpreting anti-war feeling as evidence of support for their party.
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