SOCIALIST Emma Dent Coad has said it is “looking very likely” she will stand as an independent MP for Kensington as donations flooded into her crowdfunded electoral campaign.

In an interview with the Morning Star, the former Labour MP who left the party in April, said she had been convinced by the “very positive” responses she received over the last 24 hours.

Many donations credited her campaigning for survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster shortly after her shock election victory over the Tories as the west London constituency’s MP in 2017.

Some contributors had also backed socialist Jamie Driscoll’s hugely successful crowdfunding North East mayoral campaign after he was blocked from standing by Labour, and quit the party to do so as an independent.

As her campaign’s crowdfunder approached £10,000 of its £30,000 target today, she told the Star: “It’s looking very likely that I will stand. 

“Certainly the last 24 hours have been pretty impressive, so it’s looking very positive.”

The former member of Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group said she hoped to continue to work with trade unions if elected as an independent MP.

Currently a member of Unite, she said: “Their work at the moment is outshining any of what the political parties are doing — their fight for fair pay.

“I think for me it’s very much the issue about the social contract: you should get back what you pay in, that’s absolutely fundamental to me.”

She ruled out forming a left-wing party with Mr Driscoll and the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is also rumoured to be planning to stand as an independent in Islington North.

The independent Kensington and Chelsea councillor, who was blocked from standing as a Labour MP last year, said joining any party would be “too divisive” and counter to her drive to represent the “politically homeless” in the constituency.

“I’m sticking in Kensington and only Kensington. I can't just be one thing or another, and I have to stand for everybody,” she said.

She said that while her politics haven’t changed over her 40 years as a Labour member, the party’s has, adding many “one nation” Conservatives have too also been left “disaffected” by a lurch to the right in their party.

Asked if she would ever rejoin Labour, she said: “We will see what happens, if they reclaim that contract and help the people we are supposed to help rather than throwing them to the wolves, of course I would because I‘m Labour through and through.”

Ms Dent Coad’s crowdfunder can be found here: bit.ly/emmacampaign.