IT'S SHABANA FOR LADYWOOD , BUT IS IT REALLY A SAFE LABOUR SEAT ANYMORE?

09-06-2008

Labour has controversially selected Shabana Mahmood as their candidate for Ladywood constituency. Political pundits assume this is a safe seat for Labour....or is it. Do boundary changes in the next General Election make this a Labour marginal?

Shabana Mahmood has being selected as the Labour Party parlimentary candidate for Birmingham’s Ladywood constituency at a selection contest on Saturday.

Shabana polled 118 votes to Yvonne Mosquito's 99 votes. The other two hopefuls were Penny Barber and Sandra Samuels.

The selection of Shabana instead of Yvonne Mosquito is controversial since Shabana’s public office experience is non-existant compared to Yvonne’s 12 years as Labour Councillor for Nechells. Also 27-year old Shabana just so happens to be the daughter of Mahmood Ahmed, the Birmingham Labour Party Chair.

On the Stirrer noticeboard DancingMabel – I won’t reveal her identity, but it is sufficent to say she is influential in Birmingham’s black community - said today:

"Talking to some people this afternoon, many from the Ladywood area,  [they are] absolutely spitting feathers. There is a real perception amongst the black community that Yvonne has been ousted, in order to slide in their preferred, Asian candidate. This is doubled by the f[a]ct that she has never held office, unlike Yvonne, and has no track record locally. She has merely been bumped in, at the expense of an excellent candidate."

The Ladywood constitency is presently the seat of Clare Short MP who is not re-standing again in the next General – expected to be April 2010.

The boundaries of the Ladywood consituency will change significantly compared to those in the 2005 General Election.

The new Ladywood consituency consists of four Wards: Aston, Ladywood,Nechells and Soho.

Based on the local election results of May 2008, the current party standing is:

Labour – 8196

Lib Dems – 5494

Respect – 2187

Conservative – 1705

The above figures are from local elections AND in a General Election an additional huge pool of people come out – normally about 50% of the local election turnout – who vote according to national issues. With national opinion polls being so poor for Labour at the moment, can this General Election pool of voters really be relied on to vote Labour in Ladywood?

To complicate matters further there is the impact of biraderi, or south Asian clan, voting. Will the biraderi’s throw their lot in with Labour’s Shabana Mahmood or the Lib Dem candidate Councillor Ayoub Khan? Ayoub Khan proved himself to be the comeback kid in May’s election when he won on the back of a damaging election petition court case. Can that popularity be transposed to the rest of the constituency?

As the figures above show, Ladywood under the new boundaries is no safe Labour seat and tactical voting by Respect and Conservative voters could hand this election to Lib Dem candidate Councillor Ayoub Khan.

FOLLOW THE THREAD ON THE MESSAGE BOARD click here