LABOUR bosses have chosen a replacement candidate to take on George Galloway in Bradford West.

Naz Shah is chairman of mental health charity Sharing Voices Bradford and had been on the original all-women shortlist of candidates.

Last week, the party's campaign in the target seat was plunged into chaos after the original choice, legal advisor Amina Ali, stepped down only days after being selected.

A panel from the Labour Party's ruling National Executive Committee today appointed the charity boss after interviewing four prospective replacements.

Miss Shah, a Bradford-born women's rights activist and mother-of-three, was subjected to a forced marriage at the age of 15 and was not allowed to return to school. Despite this, she worked her way up to a senior NHS post before taking on her charity role.

She is perhaps best known locally as the campaigning daughter of Zoora Shah, who was jailed in 1993 for poisoning her tormentor Mohammed Azam with arsenic, and later released early.

She said: "I’m proud to have been chosen as the Labour Party’s candidate for the seat in which I was born and am proud to call home.

"I am someone with a track record of campaigning and working for grass roots change and promise that if elected I will be a visible presence for Bradford West constituents and a stark alternative to divisive figure George Galloway.

"As is well documented I have faced big challenges in my life – I know the struggles being faced by families across Bradford West because they are struggles I have had to experience myself too.

"My life, since as far back as I can possibly remember, has been about having responsibility. From the age of six I became an 'interpreter' for my mother as my father had left her with two young children and expecting a third child."

Local party members had selected Mrs Ali, a councillor in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, from an all-women shortlist of three at a hustings event on February 21.

Cllr Naveeda Ikram, a former Lord Mayor of Bradford, came second and Miss Shah was third.

But only four days later Mrs Ali announced she was stepping down for family reasons.

She said moving her children to Bradford for the campaign would have caused "massive disruption" to their education.

Political opponents were sceptical of her reasons for stepping down, instead pointing the finger at Labour in-fighting and the influence of biraderi - Pakistani clan allegiances.

Mrs Ali's decisive selection victory over the two Bradford women at the hustings had been a surprise to many party members, and some have suggested she had not expected it either.

Party sources say a mass of voters unexpectedly got behind her, swinging the result away from the favourite, Cllr Ikram.