While Labour has gained councillors across England, and won bellwether councils such as Nuneaton and Bedworth and Milton Keynes, it has also lost some of its traditional Muslim support to George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain (WPB) and pro-Palestine Muslim independent candidates. From the industrial Lancastrian town of Blackburn to inner-city Bradford in West Yorkshire, the ‘Palestine’ effect has seen a surge of independent Muslim councillors elected – largely at the expense of Labour.
But arguably the independent pro-Gaza challenger who has landed the fiercest uppercut to Labour’s chin is one who was not even elected: the West Midlands mayoral candidate Akhmed Yakoob. While Labour won the mayoralty from Andy Street, Yakoob managed to gain 69,000 votes across the region.
The criminal defence lawyer received the backing of George Galloway. He was seeking to win over traditionally Labour-voting Muslims who believe Labour has essentially supported Israeli collective punishment of Gazans, and largely overlooked the planned creation of further illegal settlements in the West Bank.
It has been reported that as votes were counted, the reaction of some local councillors in Birmingham was of shock and horror, with traditional Labour heartlands with high Muslim populations showing mass support for Yakoob. Yakoob is also a prospective parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Ladywood, which has been represented by Labour MP and current shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood since 2010. It should worry Labour that Yakoob – who received little mainstream media coverage and simply wouldn’t have had the scale of resources available to him that establishment-party candidates usually enjoy – managed to win nearly 43,000 votes in Birmingham (compared to Labour’s 80,000 votes).
The build-up to the West Midlands mayoral election certainly turned nasty in parts. Expressing their frustration over Yakoob’s participation in the contest, thereby potentially thwarting Parker’s chances of winning, a Labour party source commented to the BBC that ‘it’s the Middle East, not West Midlands, that will have won Andy Street the mayoralty. Once again, Hamas are the real villains’. Put aside the fact that you can both support the cause of Palestinian statehood and reject Hamas on the grounds of it being a proscribed terrorist organisation – the source provided a telling insight into the way some in the Labour party believe they are ‘owed’ the votes of British Muslims.
While the likes of Labour national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden have said that Labour will work hard to win back voters who have distanced themselves from the party over the conflict in Gaza, there are British Muslims voters who perhaps need to take stock and ask themselves why they supported the party for as long and enthusiastically as they did. Sure, the Conservatives have their fair share of anti-Muslim problems and Labour may be seen as the ‘fair’ and ‘tolerant’ party. But in the modern Labour party, cultural liberals dominate. Few in the party champion family values, the sanctity of life, and the positivity of faith in British civil society.
The Starmer-Reeves axis has seen Labour cosy up to big business, while smaller family-run enterprises in tight-knit, working-class communities are increasingly out of their focus. It is safe to say that the trans radicalism which has emerged from supposedly ‘sensible’ Labour politicians such as Wes Streeting is somewhat incompatible with conventional Abrahamic teachings.
Expect the ‘Gaza effect’ to broaden into a wider conversation in Muslim communities about their fundamental tensions with the Labour party. The question many will ask is if there is space for religious social conservatism in Starmer’s party.
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