was a swing of 5% to the Conservative Party at a time when the national trend was a landslide swing against them. Bethnal Green and Bow was one of only two Labour-held constituencies to have any sort of pro-Conservative swing. Broadsheets and local newspapers ascribed this unusual result to problems over the selection of a Labour candidate, following the retirement of Peter Shore. Oona King, who won the selection, was not well known and many in the local area would have preferred a candidate from a Bangladeshi background. However the leading Bangladeshi candidates in the local Labour Party were excluded from the selection. The only other constituency to have a pro-Conservative swing was Bradford West, who similarly had selected a Sikh rather than a Muslim candidate. Following British participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an action deeply unpopular with the Muslim community in the constituency but nevertheless supported by King, the newly formed Respect Party gained support. They topped the poll in Tower Hamlets in the 2004 European Parliamentary elections and subsequently won their first local council seat at a by-election. In the 2005 general election, the seat was a narrow victory for ex-Labour MP George Galloway, one of Respect's leading figures. Respect also won seats at the 2006 local council elections although its performance was not as strong as many observers believed it could have been. Galloway attracted criticism for lack of attendance at Parliament, especially when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother. He said that he had not missed any crucial votes, and that the best way for him to advance the interests of his constituents was by general campaigning. Galloway had always said that he only intended to stay in the seat for one parliament, and in 2010 stood for the neighbouring constituency of Poplar and Limehouse. However, he lost to the Labour incumbent Jim Fitzpatrick. 2010 general election In September 2007, the Respect Party selected Abjol Miah, the leader of the Respect Group on Tower Hamlets Council, as their candidate to replace George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow. Miah had worked in the local area as a radio presenter, drugs worker and martial arts trainer. The Labour Party selected Rushanara Ali, an Oxford graduate and then-charity worker for the Young Foundation who had previously worked as Parliamentary Assistant to the constituency's former Labour MP, Oona King. Ajmal Masroor, a television presenter on political debates