The first Asian woman MP?

When she arrived in Britain she spoke no English and faced racist taunts at school. Today she is in pole position to become the country's first Asian woman MP.

Yasmin Qureshi was nine when she moved from Pakistan to Watford with her family in 1972. She was shocked by the prejudice and the freezing weather.

But she went on from state school to university and a career as a high-flying barrister. Now she could be on her way to Parliament after she was confirmed as Labour candidate for Brent East.

Ms Qureshi, 40, told the Standard she had a lot to overcome when she began her new life in Britain. She said: "I didn't speak any English, although I knew the alphabet. We used to get name-calling, the usual kind of things. Some of the kids would call out 'Pakis'. At that age you don't realise the full significance. I had to work harder to prove myself."

Her teachers were "not particularly encouraging", she said, but she thrived academically - with her engineer father and housewife mother urging her on.

"I would say that my parents have been the anchor and the backdrop," she said.

Ms Qureshi is single and lives with her 71-year-old widowed mother, just down the road from her barrister sister and bus-driver brother.

If she succeeds in ousting Lib-Dem Sarah Teather from Brent East at the next election she will also become the first Muslim woman in the Commons.

Family and religion are the cornerstones on which her politics is built.

She said: "I get pained when I read the way Islam is written about, because I understand my religion pretty well, and all religions - Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism - talk about responsibility to the community at large. We are not just here for our individual selves, we have responsibility to others, and that's the way I have been brought up."

Last week Labour announced that Ms Qureshi had failed by two votes to win selection in Brent East. She was furious and accused the party at the time of "rigging" the result.

Labour's ruling national executive investigated, found that valid votes for her had been wrongly rejected by local officials, and awarded her the nomination.

The officials who rejected the votes were supporters of her rival Robert Evans. But she refuses to endorse claims by her own backers that she was the victim of an anti-Muslim plot.

As a lawyer, she has worked for the Crown Prosecution Service and served a stint with the United Nations in Kosovo.

On the sensitive question of asylum she said: "I'm really sad at the hysterical debate that goes on with immigration."

Asked whether David Blunkett had racheted up tension with hardline policies like housing asylum seekers in accommodation centres, she choose her words carefully. "I don't think he would do anything, actually... to set out to harm anyone..."

In a year or two, Ms Qureshi will be pitched into a tough battle for Brent East - the seat long represented at Westminster by Ken Livingstone. She may find that a stance slightly askew from the Government's is no bad thing.