Respect party's second potential MP

Salma Yaqoob: 'I see myself as part of the Labour movement.'

The Guardian:

"The Labour party was the party that was going to war," she goes on, "and that was also really depressing. Because whatever I'd absorbed growing up, it was that the Labour party stood for what was right. So for Labour to do this, and for us to be at the brunt of the racism that flowed from it, and the whole war on terror rhetoric, was really disappointing. I felt very isolated. There was no protection: that's what it felt like."

An initial involvement with the Stop the War coalition led her to co-found the clunkily named RESPECT coalition (it stands for Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community and Trade Unionism), a somewhat unlikely alliance of disaffected Labour supporters, the Trotyskist Socialist Workers Party and members of such Islamic organisations as the Muslim Council of Britain.

By contrast, what are her politics? "I would characterise them as what people think the Labour party should stand for: social justice, and foreign policy about peace, not war. Pretty basic, but it covers a lot of things." Her political lodestars, she says, "are people like Arundhati Roy. I love Tony Benn. I really admire Caroline Lucas.

"I consider myself part of the Labour movement; I consider myself a genuine friend of Labour," she says. In a lot of her explanation of this, there's the implied prospect of her joining Labour at some future date if it somehow returns to the righteous leftwing path, and rethinks two big areas of policy. "Stop being austerity lite," she advises them. "And on foreign policy, get the troops home, and stop this rhetoric about more wars in Middle East. It's not difficult."

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