Labour and the Tories may live to regret abandoning the UK’s Muslims
JVL Introduction
There are four million Muslim votes at stake and while Muslim communities are as divided as others, the do share a common interest in not being simply ignored by the main political parties.
Islamophobia is rife in mainstream political life and the exclusion of Britain’s largest religious minority from mainstream politics does not augur well, says Peter Oborne.
What has brought discontent to a head is the war on Gaza.
In what is the most concerted attempt to date to galvanise the Muslim vote, a grassroots organisation is coordinating candidates standing against MPs who did not support the call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
They might well not win, but they could cost some Labour MPs dear.
RK
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Wed 31 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
Labour and the Tories may live to regret abandoning the UK's Muslims
From supporting Israel to not tackling Islamophobia, the main parties see the loss of Muslim votes as a price worth paying. Signs are growing that could prove costly come election day
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary James Cleverly and Foreign Secretary David Cameron were guests of honour at the annual Conservative Friends of Israel business lunch in central London two weeks ago.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, were also present, along with 700 other guests.
More than 100 days into the Gaza War, it is hard to think of a more powerful statement that the British government is fully on the side of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel regardless of 26,000 Palestinians dead.
A few days earlier, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer had made his own public demonstration of his unqualified support for Israel when he addressed a Jewish Labour Movement meeting in north London.
He chose this moment to speak publicly for the first time about Labour’s decision to drop its support for a Palestinian state – peculiar timing, given Netanyahu’s refusal to entertain a two-state solution.
Starmer had not bothered to warn Husam Zomlot, Palestinian head of mission in London, even though his remarks pertained to Palestine, not Israel.
The message from the leaders of Britain’s two main parties is stark.
Neither is disturbed by Israeli atrocities and war crimes, or the genocidal language used by Israeli leaders up to and including Israeli President Isaac Herzog (who spoke via a video address alongside Sunak at the Conservative Friends of Israel business lunch).
It’s impossible that with either leader in charge, Palestinians could trust Britain to play any role in building peace when this conflict ends.
‘Shaking off the fleas’
The cross-party merger on Gaza is the latest and most egregious example of the unspoken agreement between the two main political parties: Muslims should be at best ignored and at worst targeted and marginalised.
Islamophobia is today rife within Labour, as Ali Milani, former Labour candidate against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge in 2019, highlighted in a devastating interview with Middle East Eye.
The Martin Forde report emphasised Labour’s Islamophobia. More recently, a Labour Party source reportedly referred to Muslims leaving Labour as “shaking off the fleas”. Ugly, dehumanising language.
The Labour leadership seems to have decided that the loss of Muslim support is acceptable. Starmer’s strategic focus is on what party insiders call “hero voters” – code for Labour supporters, many in northern constituencies, who switched to Johnson’s Tories in 2019.
But the Conservative party is worse. As I have set out in a series of investigative articles for Middle East Eye, the Tory organisation persistently smears and targets Britain’s Muslim minority.
During Zac Goldsmith’s 2016 campaign to be mayor of London. With the fabricated Trojan Horse affair, whipped up by the Tory government in alliance with a virulently Islamophobic mass media.
The government attack on the nationwide ceasefire marches as “hate marches” is the latest case in point.
This exclusion of Britain’s largest religious minority from mainstream politics is terrible for democracy, and a disaster for social cohesion.
Muslims are mobilising
For Britain’s almost four-million Muslim population, this creates an urgent problem: how should they vote in the looming general election given that so many of their concerns are ignored or despised by the two biggest political parties?
The election could be called within weeks, if speculation that Sunak will choose 2 May turns out to be correct.
Muslims are mobilising. Earlier this month came the bombshell announcement that British-Palestinian Leanne Mohamad would run as an independent candidate in Ilford North against Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
The young activist was chosen after a hustings at the Redbridge Community Action Group, which had promised to support a candidate that would be “strong on Palestine, NHS, racism, Islamophobia and the cost of living crisis”.
Elected as an MP in 2015, Streeting is vulnerable. He has a majority of more than 5,000, which in normal circumstances should increase sharply with the Tories collapsing at the polls.
But the circumstances are not normal. According to a 2021 census, the London Borough of Redbridge (which contains Ilford North) has a 31 percent Muslim population, and polls suggest that Labour’s support among the community has dropped as a result of its stance on Gaza.
That drop in support is not enough to secure victory for Mohamad – but could be enough to cost Streeting his majority.
Last week, the human rights lawyer Tasnime Akunjee declared that he will go “head to head” against the incumbent Labour MP Rushanara Ali in Bethnal Green and Stepney.
Ali, who abstained rather than support last year’s Commons vote to support a ceasefire in Gaza, secured a whopping majority of 37,524 in 2019. But 41,390 (40.1 percent) of her electorate is Muslim, making her less impregnable than she looks.
Akunjee told MEE: “I am standing because the incumbent did not give a voice to her constituents. She’s a puppet on a string for Starmer. The party system is now a force against democracy rather than a force for democracy.”
Need for collaboration
As the Guardian reveals in a well-informed article on Wednesday, Starmer’s office has begun polling British Muslim voters as fears rise about the damage done to their core vote.
To me this feels like too little, too late. The damage is done.
More independents are likely to emerge, many of them coordinated by a community-based campaign called “the Muslim Vote”, an initiative which bears comparison with the “Abandon Biden” campaign among Arab Americans, which is considered to have inflicted significant damage on Joe Biden’s poll rating in the United States.
The Muslim Vote (TMV) was launched on 19 December. It has been endorsed by Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), the Muslim Association of Britain, the Muslim Council of Scotland and Prevent Watch – among other groups. Its mission statement says: “We will no longer tolerate being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of four million acting in unison.
“We are focused on seats where the Muslim vote can influence the outcome. We are here for the long term. In 2024, we will lay the foundations for our community’s political future.”
Though not the first concerted attempt to galvanise the Muslim vote, it is the most powerful to date.
TMV says it has “thousands” of volunteers and its campaign supporters “collectively reach over 20 million” people. It offers to come and “help you determine whether your local area should put up an independent”. It also offers to help with analysing constituency data – and with organising a local campaign.
The basic principle behind this initiative is: “We will not back anyone who voted against or abstained on the ceasefire vote. We believe in devolved decision-making. Local communities will be empowered to back a candidate that is pro-Palestine and pro-peace.”
Pro-Palestinian candidates will need to be brave. Guido Fawkes, the right-wing website, has already launched the inevitable assault on Akunjee, who is the lawyer for Shamima Begum, with the headline “Isis Bride Lawyer Stands Against Labour”. Expect much more of the same.
There are of course many problems. British Muslims, like any other community, are divided. They need to find a way of collaborating if they are to make their voices heard at a national level.
And not just with each other. Starmer has worked almost as hard at driving the left out of the Labour Party as he has at turning his back on Muslims.
There are indications that the left is also beginning to mobilise against Starmer. It needs to work with the Muslim community. This should not cause too much of a problem. Muslim organisations and the left have worked together before, most notably in the Stop the War protests against the Iraq invasion of 2003.
As the two main parties turn their backs on Muslims, while moving ever further towards the right, we may be seeing the emergence of a new British Muslim political consciousness.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Reproduced here with permission of Midde East Eye
I became eligible to vote in 1963 and I have voted Labour ever since. I am unlikely to vote Labour ever again. I have no idea what Labour’s policies are which is bad enough, but Starmer’s stance on Gaza is the last straw.
As Peter comments above: there are different opinions within the Muslim “community”, but one single galvanizing factor is both party’s overt complicity with Zionist genocide, in Gaza and increasingly within the West Bank. The “left” must work side-by-side, in collaboration with the Muslim and other “communities” to actively organize and campaign against MP’s who support the massacre of innocent Palestinians, by not agreeing to call for a permanent ceasefire. As Peter asserts: the two main parties unwavering support for the Zionist, their death squads, their murderous executions and destruction of Palestinian homelands is now permanently embedded in the collective consciousness of all Muslim and pro-Palestinian supporters. It will never be forgotten. The consequences for British politics, especially for the Labour Party, are already far-reaching and irretrievable.
In his terrific book, ‘The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is wrong about Islam’, Oborne writes:
‘…In the United Kingdom, it is becoming an open question
whether Islam, our second most followed religion, will evolve
into a welcome addition to our national identity, or be seen as
a malign force only serving to corrupt our national ideals. The
dominant view expressed by ministers, think tanks and in the
press is that Islam is indeed a bad thing. Critics of Islam, who
exist at senior levels in both major political parties, in general
concur that the British state has become too accommodating to
Muslims. Some even allege that certain Muslims are conspiring
to take over parts of the state. This discourse may well win votes,
but is dangerous and wrong. One of the purposes of this book is
to dismantle these lies and falsehoods told about Muslims and
Islam, and to open the way to a clearer and more truthful mutual
understanding within the British tradition of religious toleration.
I will show that the United Kingdom is currently replaying
an unpleasant debate about religious and national identity that
has emerged time and again in history. Many of the moral panics
today being mobilised against Islam duplicate or echo the torrent
of murderous hatred that was directed against Muslims during the
Middle Ages — and even more so Jews, who had the misfortune to
live in England in much larger numbers until they were expelled
by Edward I in 1290…’
I’d just add that if we want religions to give us significance in a pitiless universe, hoping they’ll alleviate the terrors equally of being, and intimations of not being, in the world, a corollary is that if those Others’ beliefs are right, then Ours are wrong, and we’re sunk: damned to nothingness.
Like many in Britain, I hardly know any Muslims. The nearest that I get is local GP doctors whose qualifications were gained in Lahore and Karachi. As well as being fine doctors, they are particularly sympathetic towards patients.
I was horrified to read that our government had recently hosted a bunch of top Israeli politicians at a Conservative Friends of Israel business dinner, at the same time as the IDF genocide of the indigenous people was going on.
It may next be a British government hosting Israeli politicians at a Labour Friends of Israel business dinner, in keeping with a Two Tory Party Solution.