David Cohen in the Evening Standard on Monday wrote the election race to win the constituency seat of Poplar and Limehouse where incumbent Labour MP, Jim Fitzpatrick (pictured), is facing the strong prospect of being unseated.

Fitzpatrick was lambasted by Muslim residents in the Borough when he walked out of a Muslim wedding last year and then wrote to his local paper expressing his indignation at the bridal couple’s decision at having segregated seating. Fitzpatrick had accused the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) of influencing the couple’s decision, something the couple strongly denied, stating that the decision was their own.

The affair still casts its long shadow over the election contest in the constituency as ‘the fallout from the wedding fiasco and the national rise of the Tories in the polls, [turns] this once-safe Labour seat [into] a neck-and-neck three-horse race.’

With boundary changes affecting the majority Fitzpatrick may otherwise have relied upon, and his own ‘clumsily handled’ reaction to the Muslim wedding returning to haunt him, as Muslim residents review their election options, Fitzpatrick will have to face up to the fact that insulting a large proportion of his electorate is no sensible way of going about seeking re-election.

Read Cohen’s article here.

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