Twelve candidates will stand for election to city council after surge of interest in wake of byelection victory
Respect has put forward 12 candidates to stand in the council elections on 3 May in Bradford, the scene of George Galloway's spectacular byelection victory last month, meaning that the party will cover more than a third of the wards in which seats are up for election.
Respect is trying to follow up Galloway's extraordinary success and a growth in interest among young Asian people in the city to win a swathe of seats on the council.
The 12 candidates, two of whom are Asian women, were hastily selected by the Respect leadership after a surge of local interest including what Respect described as hundreds of applications, including some from former party members. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are fielding 30 candidates, one for every ward. Labour holds 44 seats, just short of an overall majority.
Respect is also backing a directly elected mayor for the city in the referendum being held on the same day as the council elections. If Bradford votes yes, the election for the city's mayor will be held in November, opening up the chance of Respect running a large city in England.
The party will work hard to oust the Labour council leader, Ian Greenwood, and hopes to make gains from the Tories and Liberal Democrats as well as Labour. In a sign of just how unexpected Galloway's success had been, Respect was unable to put up a candidate in every ward in Bradford West, the parliamentary constituency gained for the party by Galloway. One proposed candidate withdrew at the last minute, leaving the party scrambling to find an alternative.
Respect is in dispute with the council over whether the nomination papers for one ward in the constituency were submitted too late.
The leader of Respect, Salma Yaqoob, claimed the council had been unco-operative in helping Respect candidates fill in their nomination forms in time. She said on her website that "there is a perception of bias aimed at 'blocking' of Respect during the election period".
Initial signs are that Respect has not been able to capitalise on the surge in publicity surrounding its victory to put up more candidates elsewhere in Yorkshire or indeed Manchester, where only one Respect candidate is sitting.
Respect has fallen back in local government in recent years, and probably only held 20 seats at its high-water mark.
There are also initial indications that the Liberal Democrats are not fielding as many candidates as they did in the comparable local elections in 2008. There seems to have been a fall-back in Lib Dem candidates in Scotland and parts of the south-west.
Liberal Democrats dispute the findings, saying that in England in 2008 they contested 79% of wards, and this year it has fallen to 75% .
It looks as if they are they are not fielding a full slate in Liverpool, Nuneaton, Rochford, Peterborough and Powys , but cite technical reasons, or in the case of Merseyside a history of not standing in every seat.
The number of candidates a party fields is a good proxy for the activisms of a party, and the state of its morale. The full numbers are not expected to be known until tomorrow.
In England, the Conservatives are defending 974 seats, the Liberal Democrats 516 and Labour 525. This excludes six councils in which the ward boundaries have been redrawn.