ANY hopes of keeping personalities out of politics were dashed at Bradford West hustings last night in front of more than 200 constituents.

There was standing room only at the Carlisle Business Centre in Manningham where the stage was set for prospective parliamentary candidates from Respect, Labour, Conservatives, Ukip, Liberal Democrats and Greens to make their case to voters.

Despite an early plea from hustings chairman Ratna Lachman for the speakers to keep it clean and stick to issues only, within minutes of the event getting under way it descended into a war of words, accusations and slurs between the Respect's George Galloway and Labour's Naz Shah.

In her opening three-minute speech, Ms Shah repeatedly referred to Mr Galloway as an "absentee MP" accusing him of never being in Bradford and being "too busy earning loads elsewhere".

He fired back by saying the day after she came bottom in Bradford West's first Labour candidate selection, she had rung Respect to ask if she could be its candidate in Bradford East.

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"You have made a bit of a fool of yourself," he said. Ms Shah replied it had all been a joke.

Mr Galloway then said: "There are enough liars in the House of Commons already without it admitting another."

Before the hustings began Ms Lachman, who is director of justice and rights group JUST West Yorkshire, told the Telegraph & Argus it had organised the event to make sure people turned up at the ballot box on May 7 to vote on issues and not personalities, adding: "In my view there has been too much of that already here in Bradford West."

But the first part of the hustings show was dominated by Ms Shah and Mr Galloway which Conservative's prospective parliamentary candidate George Grant told the audience was "a crying shame".

He said the two had thwarted prospects of real issues from the night being reported because their personalities had taken over.

Among the questions from the audience put to the candidates included how could the standard of Bradford schools could be improved and what would they do stop Britons joining ISIS.