Sagal Abdi-Wali is joined by Tulip Siddiq for morning after the night before celebrations

LABOUR by-election winner Sagal Abdi-Wali said she would not be deterred by racist trolls as her victory in Holborn and St Pancras led to a new raft of abusive messages.

Ms Abdi-Wali, the council leader now heading to the House of Commons after claiming victory overnight, said she did not see most of the images and slurs posted on social media.

“I’m going to do my hardest – not just for people who look like me, but for people who don’t, people who maybe feel politics is too negative,” she said. “What upsets me most is how this might deter other people from getting involved. We just don’t want to be part of this negativity.”

The new MP said the best way to beat the trolls was to “bring more people forward”, adding: “I need to be a voice who fights for more people to get involved: become school governors, get involved in their local communities, stand to be councillors — and make sure more and more people from hopeful communities are standing in politics.”

Her by-election campaign started amid anger towards Zia Yusuf, the Reform party’s home affairs spokesperson, who sent a tweet about her birth in Somalia; she came to London as a child refugee in the 1990s.

Today, responses to news of her victory included AI images of her wearing a lifeboat jacket, angry replies about the fact a Somali woman had become an MP, and one-word messages which simply said “traitor”.

“I think there is a wider conversation about the responsibility of tech companies — not just stuff like that, but the wider risks society faces. I’m very eager to have those conversations with people who are involved in it,” she said.

But she added that she had never felt worried for her personal safety on the campaign trail: “I always had a lot of people supporting me, and I always knew people had my back.”

Ms Abdi-Wali was speaking as Education Secretary Lucy Powell joined her for a celebratory rally in Camden Town this morning (Friday).

Hours before, she had referenced her mother and late father in her victory speech and said neither of them would have believed that their daughter would one day be a Member of Parliament when they first arrived in England.

“Neither of them — especially my mum — ever really thought about politics, or about being a particularly public figure,” she said, although her father was once a Liberal Democrat candidate many years ago.

““They’ve always been community-based figures. She’s [my mother has] dedicated her life – since we were here – to serving this community. She’s given so much to this community, and that inspired me, but I don’t think they ever saw this coming.”