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Outspoken former Birmingham councillor Salma Yaqoob has had an application to join Labour rejected by local party members

The Hall Green Labour Party has officially objected to her joining their party because she stood for the Respect Party against Labour MP Roger Godsiff in the 2005 and 2010 general elections as well as battling Labour candidates in local elections.

Mr Godsiff said: “She has a history here in Hall Green. The local party considered the issues and unanimously decided that her application should be refused. That is all I have to say.”

Her application is still thought likely to be accepted as Labour’s National Executive Committee can dismiss the local party’s view and hand her a membership card. Other former Respect members, including another former Sparkbrook councillor Shoukat Ali, have been accepted as Labour members.

The Birmingham Mail approached Ms Yaqoob for comment but she has not responded. Last month she dismissed speculation that she wants to be Hall Green MP and was being lined up to succeed Mr Godsiff.

He has been a Birmingham MP since 1992 and has also made it clear he has no intention of stepping aside in 2020 .

But the rumours will not go away and Labour sources say he is preparing the ground for a selection challenge from Ms Yaqoob.

Birmingham Labour Party members are divided over her membership, with members in Hall Green still bitter from the years Ms Yaqoob stood against them. She got more than 10,000 votes each time in a seat which had been safe Labour territory.

Her views on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , austerity and the Trojan Horse in schools issue has often put her at odds with mainstream political opinion.

Others see her as an asset with a national political profile having been a leader of Respect and major figure in the Stop the War Coalition - an organisation which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn once chaired. She has been talked of as future Labour MP material under Mr Corbyn’s leadership on an anti-austerity, anti-war platform.

She was leader of Respect until 2012 when she resigned in protest at comments on rape made by her former colleague George Galloway.

At the time Birmingham Northfield MP Richard Burden said: “If right for her and us and differences resolved, Salma Yaqoob would be asset.”