Respect Party Leader Begins Legal Proceedings to Overturn UK Election

LONDON (Sputnik) — On May 7, George Galloway lost his West Bradford seat to Labour Party candidate Naseem Shah, polling 8,557 votes against 19,977.

“It has come to my notice that there has been widespread malpractice in this election, particularly over postal voting. We are in the process of compiling the information which will form part of our petition to have the result set aside,” Galloway said, as quoted by the Guardian.

Galloway had earlier made another complaint to the Elections Commission, that allegations made by Naseem Shah in Urdu about him on an Asian TV show were untrue, arguing that this was an attempt to use false statements to affect the election result. Shah alleged in the TV show that Galloway had travelled to her homeland, Pakistan, and posed as her dead father to obtain some personal information about her.

The Labour Party finished second in the general election with 29 percent of vote, losing a significant amount of seats to the ruling Conservative Party, which obtained 331 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons.

The Respect Party failed to secure any seat in the House of Commons.