Bradford West

[stb12]

Bradford West

[YL]

Almanac profile

Candidates

Imad Ahmed (Lib Dem)
Umar Ghafoor (Ind)
Jamie Hinton-Wardle (Reform UK)
Akeel Hussain (Ind)
Muhammed Ali Islam (Ind)
Khalid Mahmood (Green)
Nigel Moxon (Con)
Naz Shah* (Lab)

[YL]

I've found evidence of two people talking about standing as Independents here. One is Muhammed Ali Islam, councillor for Manningham, who has a TikTok video. The other is Akeel Hussain, who also has a TikTok page.

[Sg1]

May 31, 2024 15:20:16 GMT YL said:

I've found evidence of two people talking about standing as Independents here. One is Muhammed Ali Islam, councillor for Manningham, who has a TikTok video. The other is Akeel Hussain, who also has a TikTok page.

Well, if they have tiktok pages...

[john07]

May 31, 2024 17:28:42 GMT Sg1 said:

May 31, 2024 15:20:16 GMT YL said:

I've found evidence of two people talking about standing as Independents here. One is Muhammed Ali Islam, councillor for Manningham, who has a TikTok video. The other is Akeel Hussain, who also has a TikTok page.

Well, if they have tiktok pages...

So no Chinese influence then?

[Crimson King]

Saw a banner for Akeel Hussain here a couple of days ago - looks to have the same branding as the BIG - presumably left over from the locals

[YL]

Who Can I Vote For is showing another Independent here, Umar Ghafoor. There's a former Labour council candidate of this name.

[YL]

Jun 2, 2024 15:46:03 GMT Crimson King said:

Saw a banner for Akeel Hussain here a couple of days ago - looks to have the same branding as the BIG - presumably left over from the locals

Do you have an idea of what is going on with the different Independents here? Muhammad Ali Islam is a BIG councillor, so it is a little odd that another candidate is using their branding.

[Crimson King]

GOK perhaps it will be clearer after Friday

[YL]

www.bradford.gov.uk/your-council/elections-and-voting/statement-of-persons-nominated-and-notice-of-poll/

8 candidates here, including all three previously listed Independents.

[Crimson King]

ok, so I am going to try and make some sense of the fun that is my home constituency of Bradford West. Currently a Labour seat held by Naz Shah, but has previously voted for Galloways Respect in a by-election. My starting point is that I don’t think last times GE result will be a particulary good starting point.

Looking at the votes in the last Locals we have:

Independents 12,379
I think they were all affiliated with the Bradfrod Independent Group and won four of the wards easily with far smaller but not insignificant votes in the out of the city wards of Thornton & Allerton and Clayton & Fairweather Green where they came third close behind the Conservatives. I would imagine their vote was mainly from the Allerton and Fairweather green ends of these wards respectively.
Labour 8347, Winning T&A and C&FG
Greens 3143 mostly from Heaton Ward where they were second, they were 5th just behind my wife in T&A
Cons 2362
Lib Dem 567 from two wards. We probably would have snagged a few hundred more with paper candidates in the other four wards so perhaps a local election ‘base’ of about 1000

Total about 27000

for comparison at the last GE the votes were
Independant 90
Labour 33736
Greens 813
Con 6717
Lib Dem 1349
Brexit 1556

ie about 4400, meaning there are some 17000 GE voters to find homes for.In past times we could probably assume most of these would go to Labour and Con, and be enough to give a comfortable Labour victory, and though that is still the likely outcome things are a bit more complicated.

Starting at the easy end, I imagine we (LD) will pick up a few more votes - how many will largely depend on national mood and profile of the party, and whether it will be enough to lift us into deposit saving levels remains to be seen.
The Greens are a bit more tricky - most of their LE vote was in one ward, and may be to an extent personal to that candidate who had worked it a few years so they might slip back a little. However I would be surprised if the didn't easily come above 5% unlike last time.
I imagine most of the old Brexit Party vote will go to Reform, along with a fair few of the GE only voters who in the past would have voted conservative. They might also take some of the LE Con vote as well as there was no Reform option in May and things are even worse for the Cons and better for Reform than then. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Reform finish ahead.
For the Conservatives the factors are more or less the mirror image of that, and t is entirely possible things will get even worse for them over the next three weeks.

Which brings us to the independents, and in particular why didn't they get their act together and support a single candidate? One possibility is that they include one or more spoiler candidates intended to split the Indy vote deliberately to make things safer for Labour. I'm not sure even I am that cynical, but you never know. Alternatively they may all think they have a chance to be swept in on an Indy tide and no one was prepared to leave it to another with the likely outcome of mutual destruction.

Muhammed Ali Islam is the BIG affiliated independent who tool 4000 votes in Manningham in the locals. As noted in the Bradford local thread he has stood twice previously on a more or less 'younger people in the ward have been ill served by the traditional family leaders deciding who the (Labour) winner will be way of doing things' platform. He is not just someone who has fallen out with the Labour party over Gaza. As such I am not surprised that he wouldn't want to stand down as part of some sort of deal. I have seen a few banners for him, mainly in Manningham.

I know nothing of the other two candidates so what follows is largely speculation. I haven't bothered to trawl through old SOPNs to see if they crop up there.

I have seen no posters or banners for Umar Ghafoor. Others have suggested he has been a Labour candidate in the past so I guess he would be the most likely 'spoiler'.

There are a lot of banners about the place for the final Indy, Akeel Hussain. My first impression was that they were using the BIG branding, but on closer inspection that is just down to the use of green and red. Now whilst Hussain is not an uncommon name, it is also true that the Hussain family have a long history of influence and power in Bradford West, with a number of councillors and the current MP for Bradford East having been the Labour candidate who lost out to Galloway in the 2012 by-election. If Akeel is connected to them it may well be a genuine attempt to reaffirm that influence. This is just the sort of thing that M Ali Islam was concerned about so would further explain the inability of those two opposing camps to come together.

[Crimson King]

I have finished my thought above now and would be interested in the views of YL and swanarcadian in particular

[YL]

It does seem like the Independents like TikTok:

Muhammed Ali Islam - clearly the BIG candidate
Akeel Hussain
Umar Ghafoor - including a video where he has a bit of a go at the other two

No, I haven't watched them all.

Note the difference in numbers of followers.

[YL]

Jun 12, 2024 9:57:48 GMT Crimson King said:

There are a lot of banners about the place for the final Indy, Akeel Hussain. My first impression was that they were using the BIG branding, but on closer inspection that is just down to the use of green and red. Now whilst Hussain is not an uncommon name, it is also true that the Hussain family have a long history of influence and power in Bradford West, with a number of councillors and the current MP for Bradford East having been the Labour candidate who lost out to Galloway in the 2012 by-election. If Akeel is connected to them it may well be a genuine attempt to reaffirm that influence. This is just the sort of thing that M Ali Islam was concerned about so would further explain the inability of those two opposing camps to come together.

The Umar Ghafoor video I mentioned states that Akeel Hussain is the son of a Labour councillor defeated in May.

[Crimson King]

Jun 13, 2024 16:41:03 GMT YL said:

Jun 12, 2024 9:57:48 GMT Crimson King said:

There are a lot of banners about the place for the final Indy, Akeel Hussain. My first impression was that they were using the BIG branding, but on closer inspection that is just down to the use of green and red. Now whilst Hussain is not an uncommon name, it is also true that the Hussain family have a long history of influence and power in Bradford West, with a number of councillors and the current MP for Bradford East having been the Labour candidate who lost out to Galloway in the 2012 by-election. If Akeel is connected to them it may well be a genuine attempt to reaffirm that influence. This is just the sort of thing that M Ali Islam was concerned about so would further explain the inability of those two opposing camps to come together.

The Umar Ghafoor video I mentioned states that Akeel Hussain is the son of a Labour councillor defeated in May.

That figures, presumably Arshad Hussain in Toller. So revenge spoiler or serious attempt, take your pick.

[Deleted]

Regarding the independents, too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say. Labour hold.

[YL]

Jun 14, 2024 5:12:13 GMT @weld said:

Regarding the independents, too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say. Labour hold.

Perhaps, and if I had to guess I would go for a Labour hold, but it's quite possible that one of the three Independents (Islam would be my guess) will get the lion's share of the Independent vote to the extent that the others' candidacies won't have made that much difference.

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2024 6:25:12 GMT YL said:

Jun 14, 2024 5:12:13 GMT @weld said:

Regarding the independents, too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say. Labour hold.

Perhaps, and if I had to guess I would go for a Labour hold, but it's quite possible that one of the three Independents (Islam would be my guess) will get the lion's share of the Independent vote to the extent that the others' candidacies won't have made that much difference.

Indeed. SV would be fascinating here, and it's probably best for Labour that we still have FPTP and not AV. 

[Crimson King]

unaddressed freepost from the Hussainite independent this morning. Pledges to donate 50% of his salary to charitable causes in Bradford West, 50% to support ‘humanitarian efforts in Palestine’. Content mainly domestic - health, education state of Bradford but with a couple of statements aboute Gaza.
I also bumped into a retired labour councillor on the bus yesterday who told me he hadn’t bothered to deliver a postal voters letter to me, so presumably others have had them

[right]

Another Muslim independent (among the three), this time with Demon Eyes

electionleaflets.org/leaflets/19725/