Labor 'failed to connect with Asians in Bradford'

George Galloway's victory in Bradford West was partly due to Labou's failure to connect with the Asian community, the shadow home secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper said her party had not won over young Asians or Muslim women.

Respect Party MP Mr Galloway, expelled by Labor in 2003, held a rally before 2,000 people on Sunday after winning Thursday's by-election by 10,140 votes.

He said he had the support of people of all backgrounds in a "democratic uprising" against established parties.

In taking Bradford West, Mr Galloway overturned a Labor majority of more than 5,000 at the 2010 general election.

He was previously MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London.

'Local factors'

Ms Cooper told the BBC's Andrew Marr program the by-election was "deeply disappointing" and the party had "lessons to learn".

"I think it is the case that Labor wasn't connecting enough with young voters in Bradford's Asian community.

"My sense too is that we weren't connecting enough with Muslim women in Bradford."

She said there were clearly "local factors" that had been significant in the constituency and warned against generalizing about the Asian community because Labor had been successful in other by-elections with significant Asian populations.

Commentators have suggested Mr Galloway attracted many Asian voters because of his opposition to the war in Iraq and his call for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately.

But the Respect MP has rejected that, pointing out that Labor's candidate was, in fact, a Muslim of Pakistani origin.

He told Sunday's rally in Bradford that his 85% share of the vote in the city's diverse university ward showed he had support of people of all races and religions.

"This is a mass popular rejection of people of all kinds of the existing political class," he said.

Ms Cooper said she was "worried" about what Mr Galloway would do now he had been elected.

"We saw what happened last time, we saw what happened in Bethnal Green," she said.

"We saw how little, in fact, that he did in Parliament and how little he did to stand up for people in east London, so I hope that he will do more this time because he needs to show respect for the people who voted this time."

Labor MP Michael Dugher, former spokesman for Gordon Brown, told the BBC's Sunday Politics that Bradford West was "possibly the first by-election in history that was fought and even won on social media".

"So you had George Galloway with 85,000 followers on his Facebook page [while] our candidate was knocking on doors the old-fashioned way," he said.