The Sunday Telegraph’s essay has flagged up the astonishing impact of the Muslim Vote on the July 4th 2024 General Election, including the astonishing revelation that its vote share was around the same as that of Reform. Despite Labour’s overwhelming win in terms of seats, its majority was drastically truncated in many constituencies:
When the circus finally arrived, it offered the usual attractions. The old rituals were a comfort. John Curtice, the swing-o-meter, Laura Kuenssberg and Jeremy Vine performed the familiar motions, not to mention the irrepressible Count Binface.
But while the Labour celebrations and the Tory misery felt routine – even after we had grown used to them in opposite roles – under cover of darkness, a shocking new act crept into the tent.
An insurgent force has entered British politics. The Muslim Vote had no rosette and advanced no meaningful manifesto beyond a set of deeply sectarian principles. It stood candidates tactically, and owed their allegiances purely to religious and ethnic interests.
It had a single set of demands, all related to Gaza. This was a non-party. Yet in numbers, its victory was equal to Reform.
On the day of the election, Jeremy Corbyn proclaimed: “Today, Palestine is on the ballot.” If victorious in Islington North, he added, he would “stand up for the people of Gaza” and campaign tirelessly for “an end to the occupation of Palestine”.
This was the kind of single-issue politics we have come to expect from the former Labour leader. But he is now a prophet of the new sectarianism in our politics.
In Corbyn’s constituency, about 13% of residents are Muslim. The result matched the trend: in seats where that number pushed above 10%, Labour’s results were down by 11 points. Across the country, Sir Keir’s party was enjoying a famous victory, but a powerful counter-current flowed from a single cause, rooted in a single demographic group.
Across the country, comfortable Labour majorities swung to razor-thin margins or outright losses, as Muslim voters turned their backs on the party.
In constituencies where in the 2021 census at least 40% of people described their religion as Muslim, the Labour vote share suffered an average drop of 33.9 percentage-points. These areas were typically in Bradford, London and Birmingham.
In Bradford West, where the highest share of adults say they are Muslim at 59%, the Labour candidate Naz Shah only barely managed to eke out a majority. …
Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth was ousted in Leicester South by independent candidate Shockat Adam, who had a 979 vote majority. He had not supported the grassroots campaign to suspend arms sales to Israel, or to endorse the International Criminal Court case against Benjamin Netanyahu. Victorious Adam reacted with the cry: “This is for Gaza.”
Rachel Reeves’s special advisor, Heather Iqbal, also failed to gain a majority in the new constituency of Dewsbury and Batley. …
The collapse in Muslim support also made a sizeable dent in Labour’s national vote share. …
In Ilford North, the new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, won by a margin of only 528 against independent Leanne Mohamad.
He described the campaign against him as the ugliest he had ever seen, including fabricated recordings in which he appeared to say “I f***ing don’t” care about innocent Palestinians being killed. His vote share had dropped by 20.7% from 2019 to 33.4%.
Muslim Vote has lost no time trumpeting its achievements.
The Muslim Vote shadows a political party without having to conform to the requirements of being one. On Thursday, it aped the customary rubric by celebrating its scalps.
“The goal from the very start has been to empower the Muslim vote and send the main political parties a message,” it tweeted, a funhouse-mirror version of Nigel Farage’s insurgent rhetoric. “Muslims are united, in Muslim-heavy areas your majorities will be under threat, and there may even be an upset. Tonight, we did that in spades.”
Unlike a normal party, however, the Muslim Vote draws its agenda from a myopic preoccupation with one war above all others.
The Telegraph asks the key question:
As the Muslim Vote grows in power and confidence, will Labour have the guts to resist?
The Labour MP for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, may be among those pushing the party to yield to The Muslim Vote. She said her party’s position on Gaza was a “stain on its record”.
In May, a leaked video of Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, showed her pleading for votes with a group of Muslim men. “If me resigning as an MP now would bring a ceasefire, I would do it. I would do it,” she begged. Having tasted so much blood this week, it seems likely that The Muslim Vote can expect further examples of such contemptible appeasement for mercy in the future.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Labour MP Andrew Western, who was re-elected in Stretford and Urmston in Greater Manchester, has called out the “toxicity” in British politics after some “idiots” took a “sledgehammer” to his home just one day after the General Election result, according to the Mail.
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