Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 July 2024
In spite of Labour’s
landslide success in the recent UK general election, analysis of the results
reveals two surprising facts. First, despite appearances, there was no
surge of popular support for Labour, rather a rejection of the 14-year-old
Conservative administration; and secondly the results were affected
fundamentally by a new political
force.
Traditionally, general elections in Britain
turn on domestic issues. The economy and
health are usually to the forefront of voters’ minds, together with the record
of the incumbent government. This time
around, though, a foreign war taking place 3000 miles away was more important
than all the usual domestic concerns for one bloc of ethnic minority voters.
The activities of a brand new
organization calling itself The Muslim Vote cost the Labour party five seats,
slashed Labour majorities in a fair number of other constituencies, and has
placed a caucus of rabidly anti-Israel MPs in the new House of Commons. They have effectively become the sixth
largest party in parliament, equal with Reform.
The
Muslim Vote was set up in May by an activist named Abubakr
Nanabawa. It was a response to the
Labour Party’s initial decision to support Israel’s right of defense against
the pogrom carried out by Hamas. An
alliance of 23 activist organizations, its aim was to unseat those MPs not
sufficiently hostile to Israel, particularly Labour party members.
The new body was conceived
as a political outlet for those opposed to Labour’s hesitancy is advocating a
ceasefire, and announced its intention to create a list of approved candidates for Muslims to vote for
in the general election. Its candidates
would stand in opposition to Labour and demand immediate recognition of
Palestine as a state and the banning of all arms sales to Israel.
This
new pro-Palestinian bloc of MPs, all of whom have beaten their Labour opponents
to win their seats, is headed by Jeremy Corbyn, one-time leader of the Labour
party who, in 2019, presided over their greatest electoral defeat since
1935. He was suspended from the party by
its new leader, Keir Starmer, in 2020 for antisemitic attitudes and remarks, so
he stood as an independent in the constituency of Islington North, which he has
represented since 1983. He trounced his
Labour opponent, winning 49% of the votes compared to Labour’s 34%.
The other four pro-Palestine MPs were elected in areas with among the highest proportion of Muslim voters in the UK. They range from Blackburn, where 47% of voters are Muslim to Leicester South, where it is 35%. One of Labour’s biggest shocks on election night was when the party’s shadow Treasury minister, Jonathan Ashworth, lost his Leicester South seat by around 1,000 votes to Shockat Adam.
“This is for Gaza!” declared Adam, as he made
his victory speech.
In Birmingham Ayoub Khan’s
victory over Labour was by a paper-thin 507 votes.
Following the October 7
massacre, Khan posted a video on TikTok claiming he had a “problem with the
credibility” of some of the accounts of what took place. At the time he was a local government councilor
in Birmingham. His then party, the
Liberal Democrats, later announced that he had been cleared of wrongdoing, had
“apologized and deleted the post” in question, and “agreed to undergo
anti-Semitism training.”
But Khan subsequently
said he had not approved the statement and did not intend to take the
anti-Semitism training course. He went on to quit the party and run as an
independent candidate in the election.
In Blackburn, Adnan Hussain
overturned a previous Labour majority of over 10,000 to win the seat by 132
votes Hussain posted an online
statement to voters: “I promise to make your concerns against the injustice
being inflicted against the people of Gaza be heard in the places where our
so-called representatives failed.”
In Dewsbury independent
candidate Iqbal Mohamed crushed his Labour opponent by winning 41% of the vote
against her 22%. Video of Mohamed speaking at a recent rally shows him
encouraging children to boycott Israel: “Go home, find every brand and every
product that has been supporting Israel and Zionism from the beginning of time
and throw it away, throw it away…That is the least we can do.”
This loss of seats that Labour
might reasonably have expected to win tells only a part of the story. More than a few Labour figures, including
some now in ministerial positions, squeezed past the winning post by the skin
of their teeth.
For example Wes Streeting, now the minister of health, won back his seat by just 528 votes over British-Palestinian Leanne Mohamad.
At his own count, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer saw his previous majority of nearly 23,000 cut in half. He won handsomely, but it was the pro-Gaza activist, Andrew Feinstein, who came second. Feinstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is a South African and was once an ANC member of the National Assembly under Nelson Mandela. He completed his studies in California and then the University of Cambridge in 1990. He was a strong supporter of the UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, but has described Starmer as “inauthentic”.
With 412 MPs out of a total of 650, Starmer
for the next five years is theoretically in a position to win each and every
issue put to a vote in the House of Commons, and to win it overwhelmingly. Yet the five Muslim Vote MPs could seriously
disrupt the main thrust of the government’s intentions if they managed to gather
support for anti-Israel action from the body of Labour MPs – and this is not
outside the bounds of possibility.
Despite Starmer’s
largely successful efforts to disempower the hard left within his party so as
to make it electable after the Corbyn years, a sizeable rump of pro-Corbynites
remains. Israel, Gaza, a ceasefire, the two-state
solution, recognizing Palestine, international arrest warrants for Israel’s
prime minister and minister of defense, the judgment of the International Court
of Justice on the accusation against Israel of genocide – all these issues may
see the government’s view challenged by the Muslim Vote five, and then
supported by an unassessable number of Labour MPs. There may be trouble ahead.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-810444
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