“Put a cross that doesn’t feel like you’re marking it in blood,” says independent challenger to LFI’s Peter Kyle

In the third of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet independent candidate Tanushka Marah – standing against Labour’s Peter Kyle

Tanushka Marah is a theatre director who was doing a lot of organising in Brighton and Hove in opposition to the genocide in Gaza. Local people then asked her to stand as a general election candidate in Hove and Portslade against Labour Friends of Israel vice chair Peter Kyle. As she told the Canary:

It was the community around me who wanted me to stand and to voice for the community. So I don’t arrive as a politician. I arrive as a member of the community.

Labour Friends of War Crimes

On the other hand, Kyle has a terrible record showing clear support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Meanwhile, as Tanushka Marah pointed out, Kyle:

has blocked a lot of his constituents who write to him. He does not answer a lot of his constituents. And everything points to the fact that he is in some way a benefactor of what is going on. So the people of Hove and Portslade are really really upset with his silence and his support [for Israel]

Considering the harsh treatment that left-wingers in the Labour Party have received simply for sharing platforms with people or liking posts critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, she asked why people like Kyle consider it to be acceptable to openly stand as the friend of a state that is “systematically starving thousands of children and targeting crowded refugee camps full of civilians”.

As she insisted:

The levels of double standard and hypocrisy are so blatant an 8-year-old could see it.

Tanushka Marah: the mainstream media is a partner in crime

Tanushka Marah also criticised the hypocrisy in the way establishment media outlets talk about Ukraine and Gaza, in particular the way in which they dispute Palestinian deaths. She argued that:

It’s becoming pathetic how desperate it is, because they’re falling over their faces with these lies. Who do people think the British public are? You must think we’re all really stupid to keep on believing these yarns that are being said. It’s like something out of an Orwell novel now. It really is.

Additionally, she stressed that:

The word gaslighting is not enough. It feels so abusive to be lied to like this when we’re grieving and we’re in outrage. If this doesn’t create a revolution, then god knows what will.

“Vote for the people who are standing for humanity”

Tanushka Marah said “We are a joyful community building around this campaign” to “unseat Pete”. And as she insisted:

This is what life could be like. We’re good people. We all know how to get on with each other. Can we just do that again, please?

In a final message to people disenchanted with the way Britain’s political system is working today, she emphasised:

We are here to give people an opportunity to partake in democracy. And who knows? It could actually get some of us independents into power to hold what will be a Labour government to account and to not let them wield as much power and arrogance as they think they can.

So even if it is just to participate and put a cross in a box that doesn’t feel like you’re marking it in blood, just vote independent, vote Green, vote for the people who are standing for humanity. It’s urgent that you do that, and you have to do that.

So that’s why normal people like myself – …a mother, I work with young people – we’re stopping our lives to do this, to make a stand so that people can vote. It’s not a grab for power. It’s an offer of democracy. So please take it… so our struggle isn’t in vain.

For more on Marah’s comments on the election and other issues, see the full interview on our YouTube channel:

Featured image via the Canary