As concerns rise about low ethnic minority uptake of the vaccine among Birmingham’s ethnic minorities, one Labour Party official and councillor in the West Midlands has been busy questioning vaccine safety. Zafar Islam – a councillor in Dudley and deputy chair of Dudley North CLP – has dozens of tweets dating back to September last year repeating antivaxxer talking points about the vaccine’s safety and lack of thorough testing. Exactly the same claims that landed Ian Lavery in such hot water…

According to Zafar, “processes of safe bioengineerings have been accelerated and vaccine formulations’ safety regulatory mechanisms apparently curtailed… Big concerns and worries.” In 2012, Zafar was the council’s cabinet member for health…

His tweets are a stream of left-wing retweets fused with a focus on Kashmir and Palestine. Despite his concerns about the vaccines, it is now a priority for Zafar to get this supposedly rushed vaccine to Palestinians in Gaza, where he claims there is a “block/ban of #COVID19 #vaccines” going to Palestine.

Odd that he has so many concerns about vaccines, yet he is really keen to ensure take-up in Gaza of the supposedly dangerous jabs, it is almost as if he has some other motivation for focus on that region: