(Middle East Eye) It’s a hot Friday night at the City Gates Conference Centre in Ilford, where the suburbs of east London begin to creep towards the county of Essex.
On stage, a young British-Palestinian woman is joined by two lions of the political left: Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of the South African parliament turned campaigner and arms trade investigator, and Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour Party leader turned independent MP.
Aged 24, Leanne Mohamad, born and raised in Ilford, ran as an independent candidate against Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the Labour right-wing’s favoured son and a man tipped as a future prime minister, in the UK’s 2024 general election.
Surfing a rising tide of anger about Labour’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, Mohamad lost by just 528 votes.
