Labour has failed to win Chingford and Woodford Green, with the party’s candidate Shama Tatler and former candidate Faiza Shaheen splitting the left vote and allowing former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith to cling on.
Just 79 votes separated Labour’s Shama Tatler from the party’s former candidate Faiza Shaheen in the east London constituency, which Labour has never won but improved its tally in and nearly took in 2019.
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Shaheen, on the left of the party, was dramatically and controversially deselected after the election was declared. Tatler is a Brent council cabinet member and senior figure in the pro-Keir Starmer Labour to Win campaign group.
The Tory vote fell by 12.6 percentage points but Labour’s fell by 19.4%.
A spokesperson for left campaign group Momentum said: “This is an embarrassing own-goal by the Labour leadership.
“Their treatment of Faiza Shaheen, a talented socialist who won a democratic selection process, was a disgrace. This is a clear example of the political costs of riding roughshod over the rights of Party members. The purges must stop – no ifs, no buts.”
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