Draft:Pro-Palestinian activism in the 2024 United Kingdom general election

During the 2024 United Kingdom general election, the topic of the invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces was a major point of contention and discussion for various parties and extraparliamentary groups and organisations. The victorious Labour Party was especially criticised over previous stances on the conflict, and saw losses in vote share and seats in areas throughout England with large Muslim populations - with several Labour politicians, some senior, losing their seats or seeing their majorities precipitously reduced.

Six independent candidates were elected at the general election - the most elected at a general election since XXXX - four of which were so-called 'Gaza Independents', and another the re-election of veteran MP Jeremy Corbyn. These five all gained their seats from the Labour Party, with Palestine a key part of their campaigns.

Background

Precedence in Iraq War protests

Political scientist Sir John Curtice spoke of how at the 2005 general election, Labour suffered "quite heavily amongst areas with substantial Muslim communities" due to the Iraq War, while the Liberal Democrats "opposed the Iraq war and picked up a lot of that vote"; "this is not the first time that there has been a bridge between some people at least in the Muslim community and the willingness to vote for Labour."

Pre-election campaign

Labour's fraying relationship with Muslim communities was demonstrated in the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election, in which George Galloway campaigned heavily on ...., with Labour's candidate Kim Leadbeater harassed by campaigners in the street over her party's position on LGBTQ+ education in schools; this is a contentious topic among Muslim communities, highlighted by protests in the Birmingham town of Sparkhill throughout 2019.

Following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel's subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Labour Party's position on the Israel-Hamas war was subject to intense scrutiny from different parts of the British populace. Left-wing, and Muslim voters expressed their anger at comments Starmer had made on LBC tacitly approving Israel's withdrawal of electricity and water to the Gaza Strip, as well as the party's decision not to support a motion in Parliament put forward by the Scottish National Party to call for a ceasefire. In mid-October 2023, a handful of Labour councillors quit the party, including Manchester councillor Amna Abdullatif - the first Arab Muslim woman elected to the city council - citing what she deemed "horrifying comments" made by "Keir Starmer and a number of his senior frontbench ... about Israel having the right to withhold fuel, water, food and electricity from the 2.2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, effectively endorsing a war crime".

An anti-Starmer protestor at a march for Gaza in late October 2023.

The Guardian wrote in late October of how Starmer being able to distance the party under his leadership from Corbyn's - by "repudiating much of the legacy of his predecessor - but by "failing to put any distance between Labour and the Conservatives on an issue of importance to British voters, they believe he has played into Tory hands", and that "Labour is far more deeply divided on the question of how to handle the crisis, caught between a desire to move away from the antisemitism of the Corbyn years and the need to show solidarity with Palestinians and their own Muslim supporters". Despite receiving "plaudits from the right for his staunch defence of Israel, insisting the country had a right to defend itself from attacks from Gaza, and refusing to speak up against some of Israel's military tactics in the region", and that despite councillor resignations, Starmer had intiially "avoided any high-profile rebellions from within the parliamentary party". Despite this, his direction was critiqued by several members of his Shadow Cabinet, with Shabana Mahmood, Louise Haigh and Wes Streeting in particular warning that "Labour was at risk of appearing callous and of losing Muslim votes". There was also relative uproar after a "senior Labour source had been quoted as saying the resignations of Labour councillors was a sign the party was 'shaking off the fleas'." The chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Steve McCabe said that Starmer's "handling has been spot on", and that the party should ignore those who "warn you they are not going to vote Labour, from the day you are elected" and "accept there is a group of people out there who spend their time looking for reasons to leave and I would treat those comments with scepticism."

On 31 October 2023, Starmer made a speech in which he outlined that Israel must commit to international law, but said he did "not believe that it is the correct position now" to call for a ceasefire, claiming Hamas would use the "freeze [in] the conflict" to "start preparing for future violence immediately", and he advocated a temporary "humanitarian pause" instead. At the time, several senior Labour politicians - including the mayors of Greater Manchester and London, the leader of Scottish Labour, and over a dozen shadow frontbench members - had called for a ceasefire. Starmer also refused to support the UN judgement that Israel had committed war crimes. The next day, 330 Labour councillors - two-thirds of which were not Muslim - signed a letter addressed to Starmer urging him to call for a ceasefire, and that "the party's refusal to back the policy, ... is 'harming communities across the UK'". Later in the week, eleven Labour councillors in Burnley - including the council leader - quit the Labour group, citing Starmer's refusal to call for a ceasefire.

Hamza Yusuf wrote in the New Internationalist that "rather than offer an alternative and push for Israel to be held to account for a litany of war crimes, instead ensured a consensus of zealous support in Westminster for Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing of Gaza", citing examples of successive attempts by senior figures in the party to not label Israel's actions as war crimes. He outlined how this was not apposite with the public's view of the conflict, with polls showing majority support for the calling of a ceasefire and the cessation of arms sales to Israel.

Rochdale by-election

In February 2024, a by-election took place in Rochdale, a constituency in Greater Manchester, following the death of Labour incumbent Tony Lloyd. Labour's candidate, Azhar Ali, was revealed to have made comments at a local party meeting claiming that the Israeli government had prior knowledge of the 7 October attacks and enabled them in order to have "the green light to do whatever they bloody want". Within a few days, Labour suspended him as their candidate - but after nominations had closed, and therefore he remained on the ballot; this also took place with the Green Party and its candidate.

30% of Rochdale's population are Muslim, and with a track record of supporting the Palestinian cause with election wins in electorates in London and Bradford with substantial Muslim populations, politics lecturers and writers Timothy Peace and Parveen Akhtar judged it "unsurprising" Galloway chose the constituency "in his bid to return as an MP". It was argued this by-election was the "first where the issue of Gaza was explicitly raised on the campaign trail", and many Muslim - and non-Muslim voters - used it as a "chance to express their anger". Both said that by dropping Ali as their candidate, it harmed Labour's "standing among Muslim voters, in Rochdale and beyond", as "Labour's position on the conflict has been seen as too lenient towards Israel by many Muslim voters and Labour Muslim politicians".

In his victory speech, Galloway pointedly said "Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza", saying that Labour and the Conservatives represented "two cheeks of the same backside".

2024 local elections

At the 2024 United Kingdom local elections, Labour became the largest party in local government for the first time since 20XX. By these elections, however, over 100 Labour councillors had left the party over its position on the Gaza conflict, and support for Labour among Muslim voters suffered. In the fifty-eight wards where over a fifth of residents identified as Muslim, the party's share of the vote was 21pts down on 2021 (the last set of local elections most of the seats up in 2024 were contested).

The Financial Times remarked that "support appeared to drain away in some areas with larger proportions of Muslim voters, a sign of the damage done by the party’s evolving position on the Israel-Hamas war since October", and that it had potentially jeopardised the party's chances in the West Midlands mayoral election, where the party had hopes to unseat an otherwise popular Conservative incumbent, considered "one of the poster boys of local Tory government". It was reported the party's candidate, Richard Parker's gains in some parts of the electorate but "had shed support in inner-city Birmingham to pro-Palestine independent Akhmed Yakoob", with a Labour source having said that in "inner city wards [Yakoob] has picked up 70 per cent of the vote [...] in wards with lots of Muslim residents pretty much all of them are lost". Yakoob, who was endorsed by George Galloway, had sought 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". During the campaign, Labour strongly condemned remarks made by a party source who labelled Hamas as the "real villains" because of the risk to Parker's campaign by Yakoob standing. Rakib Eshan of The Spectator wrote that this "provided a telling insight into the way some in the Labour party believe they are 'owed' the votes of British Muslims".

Results of the 2024 West Midlands by-election by borough. Yakoob's vote share is in purple.

Labour won the election, by just over 1,500 votes, with Yakoob courting just under 12% of the vote; in Birmingham alone, this was 20% - the highest out of any borough. Both the FT and The Spectator warned of how the re-election of several key Labour figures could be jeopardised, namely Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, with Yakoob standing against the latter in her constituency, and that 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)." Eshan pondered about whether British Muslims "need to take stock and ask themselves why they supported the party for as long and enthusiastically as they did", and that "the 'Gaza effect' [could] broaden into a wider conversation in Muslim communities about their fundamental tensions with the Labour party", the party perceived to be distancing itself from the traditional values of Muslim communities - such as by prioritising relationships with "big business" than "smaller family-run enterprises in tight-knit, working class communities" and allowing the "cultural liberals [in the party to] dominate" with regards to the party's position on LGBTQ+ issues, therefore allowing it to be questioned if there was "space for religious social conservatism" in the party under Starmer's leadership.

Notably, Labour lost overall control of Oldham Council in the north-west of England after thirteen years, losing seats to Independents who "had run on a pro-Palestine ticket". Labour's national election co-ordinator, Pat McFadden, admitted the party's performance could be partly attributed to its position on Israel's actions in Gaza "in some places" - and that the party "will work hard to win back voters" who have left the party over the issue - but that the party had been shedding support in Oldham for several years, owing to "very local factors" as well that compounded how Oldham was "knocked ... out of line with the Labour gains we've been seeing in local elections", specifically the council's record on child sex abuse. Council leader Arooj Shah attributed this to the party's loss in support, and that the "conflict in Gaza was a factor but the loss goes beyond that to toxic politics in the area" that had fomented a "'pattern of divisiveness' in Oldham" in recent years; she argued this was common in "most Northern milltowns", which have seen a "rise of independents because people think mainstream parties aren't the answer."

Nick Peel, Labour's council leader in Bolton, was more forthright, saying the fall in support - for both Labour and the Conservatives - was a "direct result of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine". Labour lost two councillors there - one to the Greens, another to an independent. Then-shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, also conceded that the party losing Muslim support was a matter of concern, and that "in some parts of the country, where some independent candidates have run for the first time, they've attracted voters that we would want in the Labour family", and it meant "we've got more work to do to listen to and learn from and support voters across the country and try to persuade them to vote for Labour when they get the chance." When asked about the effect on Labour's success by voters rejecting the party due to its position on the conflict, Starmer spoke less directly about how he was "concerned wherever we lose votes" and concentrated on where they had won support, in "bellwether councils". Momentum, a left-wing intra-party pressure group that was at its peak under Corbyn and had declined severely under Starmer, stated that it "should set alarm bells ringing", "[a]ny party which takes its core vote for granted risks disaster sooner or later", and Starmer "should respond by getting off the fence" and support suspending arms sales to Israel and recognise and condemn Israel's "ongoing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank". Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said she found Gaza was a doorstep issue, and claimed that Muslim voters moving across to her party was behind their success in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where they gained their first seats on the council.

According to BBC analysis, the Greens benefitted from a loss in Labour support in wards with "large" Muslim populations; Labour's "vote share in those areas fell 16 per cent compared with 2021, whereas it made 5 per cent gains nationwide". Other BBC analysis found that in fifty-eight wards where over a fifth of residents were Muslim, the party's share of the vote was "21% down on 2021, the last time most seats were contested". Political scientist Will Jennings reported that in "neighbourhoods with a Muslim population smaller than two per cent, its average vote share has gone up by an average of 1.5 per cent compared with last year," while in "council wards where more than five per cent of the population identifies as Muslim, the party has suffered reverses, seeing its support decline by 2.2 per cent".

Luthfur Rahman, who until May 2024 was the deputy leader of Labour-controlled Manchester City Council. He narrowly lost his seat to a Workers Party candidate, their biggest scalp in the local elections.

BBC News said that while impact on the party in a general election was yet "unclear", there was "some evidence the biggest drops in support are largely confined to areas where the party's support was already very strong", but that "any adverse reaction was less prominent in London", which it attributed to mayor Sadiq Khan having called for a ceasefire before Starmer. In London, Labour's vote was "up by three points on average in parts of London where more than 15% identify as Muslim, compared with 4.5% where the proportion is less than this".

The Workers Party won four seats on Labour-controlled councils; two in Rochdale, one in Calderdale, and one in Manchester; in the latter, the party's victorious candidate defeated the council's Labour deputy leader.

• Resignation of Labour councillors, to Inds and Greens (There have been multiple resignations at local level surrounding Labour's stance.)

Election campaign

• Endorsements, such as by The Muslim Vote

An organisation called The Muslim Vote endorsed the four successful Independent candidates, as well as others including Corbyn and Galloway. Its coordinator, Abubakr Nanabawa explained that "[w]e really have seen Muslim communities stand up and say that, you know, if you want to represent us, then you have to represent our policy positions, [which] goes beyond Gaza", citing the two-child benefit cap and the state of the NHS as one of the two most frequently raised issues of Muslims "across the country".

In response to the so-called 'Gaza Independents', Hamza Yusuf wrote that "a memo is spreading that appears unequivocal: voters won't be tricked into backing representatives that have been complicit in a genocide, and are keen to create new people-powered movements to counter them."

Birmingham Perry Barr

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Birmingham Yardley

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Blackburn

The victorious candidate in Blackburn was supported by 4BwD (Blackburn with Darwen) group on the local council, which constituted councillors that had resigned from Labour, and currently are the opposition to the Labour administration.

Dewsbury and Batley

Independent candidate Iqbal Mohamed was selected via a local primary process; according to The Guardian, he "took part in a selection process run by an independent panel put together by the North Kirklees Community Action Group and Independent Kirklees, two community groups dissatisfied with the status quo. From applications received by the two groups, the selection panel shortlisted nine candidates to go forward for interview and then whittled it down to four to take part in hustings, with Mohamed emerging as the eventual winner."

Hyphen reported that Labour had faced accusations of "attempting to split the seat's Muslim vote by fielding Heather Iqbal, who is from nearby Bradford", while "Mohamed had been chosen as a unity candidate following a hustings, with every other independent candidate opting to pull out".

Ilford North

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Leicester South

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Muslim support for Labour

At the general election in 2019, over 80% of Muslim voters supported the Labour party. In early June 2024, a poll of Muslim voters - conducted by Savanta for Hyphen - found this was at 63%, and that the party had lost "almost a quarter of its Muslim vote to other parties since the 2019 general election". It also found that "Muslims and the wider population were largely aligned on the policy issues most important to them" at the general election, with the NHS, inflation, the cost of living and the economy ranked as the issues of the greatest priority among both groups. Sunder Katwala, director of thinktank British Future, remarked that this demonstrated that while evidence of Labour "slip[ping] backwards in support among that demographic group in particular was of a "surprisingly big impact" at the local elections, such evidence in the national polling [was] of a surprisingly small impact", and concluded that "might be because voters are thinking strategically about the use of different elections." Shabna Begum, head of the Runnymede Trust, a think tank dedicated to race equivality, warned of thinking of "Muslims as a bloc vote, as a monolith community", and that "the war in Gaza is not the only issue Muslim people across the country care about, and neither can we assume that such a diverse community of people will share the same perspectives on those other issues which matter to them." Timothy Peace added that the "swing towards Labour from former Conservative voters showed that the 'Muslim vote' [...] resembles the national vote", and that Muslims are "like everyone else — there are middle-class Muslims, working-class Muslims, and Muslims who voted Conservative because they want lower taxes".

However, the poll also found that 44% of Muslims said the Israel-Gaza conflict was among their five biggest concerns, with 21% ranking it top and their "most important election issue"; this contrasted to 12% and 3%, respectively, in the general population. Additionally, for those who ranked the conflict in their top five concerns, among Muslim voters 86% "would consider backing an independent candidate running on the issue", compared to 64% for those in the general population. Anealla Safdar of Al Jazeera outlined that there were "four main options for pro-Palestine Britons who feel neither Labour nor the Conservatives represent their views – to abstain or spoil the ballot, to back an independent candidate running on a pro-Palestine platform, to vote for the Liberal Democrats, or ... to give a nod to the Greens even though they are forecast to win less than 10 percent." It was reported in mid-June 2024 that Labour were encouraging activists to campaign specifically in thirteen seats they held where Muslims were at least a fifth of the electorate, notable given its other "campaigning efforts [were] mostly being concentrated on Conservative and SNP seats in an attempt to secure a potentially record-breaking majority". Of the twenty-eight English constituencies where Muslims were at least a fifth of the electorate - all Labour-held - the party's website told prospective volunteers and canvassers to campaign in thirteen of them - three out of the four Birmingham seats, and both Luton and Bradford seats, but only one of the eleven seats in London with large Muslim populations (Bethnal Green and Stepney, the successor seat that George Galloway won at the 2005 general election due to anger over the Iraq war).

Ahead of Labour including the recognition of the state of Palestine as part of a concerted effort towards a Palestinian peace process in their election manifesto, Timothy Peace remarked that the pledge resembled "an attempt to regain Muslim and left-wing voters", and that the shift in Labour's position on Gaza from saying "Israel had a right to defend itself, to moving to this position of a ceasefire but with lots of conditions, and now apparently recognising Palestinian statehood [was] an admission by the party that they really got it spectacularly wrong on Gaza." He commented that he doubted the ability of pro-Gaza independents to be elected in several constituencies, due to the large majorities of the Labour candidates. Katwala said "Labour would be trying to persuade Muslim voters both with its general message of change and overall policy offer, and its specific manifesto policy to recognise a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution", he himself admitting that the "Labour party is losing votes among Muslims and not any other group, but is probably more popular among Muslims than any other section of the electorate" and opined that "the [Muslim] student active group is deserting Labour, [while] their mums and dads and grandparents are probably sticking with Labour much more."

Journalist Nicholas Watt reported on Newsnight that while Labour, internally, was concerned about the impact of reaction to Gaza against their vote in certain seats, they believed those at risk had such large majorities their position was relatively safe. Sir John Curtice also cast doubt over Labour MPs losing their seat due to how "those seats are pretty safe in the first place", while Muhammed Menan, founder of Palitics - an "online tool that uses data and AI technology to inform voters on how to challenge Labour’s predicted win" - said that the lack of "political experience and community consensus", as well as "credible alternatives" from the Liberal Democrats and Green parties "dilutes the impact" on independents, especially in places where more than one stand, thus running against each other and "further splitting the vote".

Results

BBC News analysis stated that the party's vote was down 23pts in constituencies where over 20% of the population were Muslim.

One seat with a substantial Muslim population, Leicester East, was also lost from Labour to the Conservatives - the Conservatives' only gain at the election - due to former Labour MPs Keith Vaz and Claudia Webbe standing as candidates for a minor, localist party and as an Independent respectively.

'Gaza Independents'

Victorious candidates

Constituency	Incumbent party/MP		Challenger	Place	Vote share	Majorities overturned
Leicester South		Jonathan Ashworth, Labour	Shockat Adam	1st	35.3% (maj. 979, 2.3%)	22,675, 45.2%
Blackburn		Kate Hollern, Labour	Adnan Hussain	1st	27.0% (maj. 132, 0.3%)	18,304, 40.9%
Birmingham Perry Barr		Khalid Mahmood, Labour	Ayoub Khan	1st	35.5% (maj. 507, 1.4%)	15,317, 36.3%
Dewsbury and Batley		new seat; notionally Labour	Iqbal Mohamed	1st	41.1% (maj. 6,934, 18.2%)	14,009

Notably, in Blackburn, a Workers Party candidate was also fielded.

Other candidates

Constituency	Incumbent party/MP		Challenger(s)	Place	Vote share	Winning candidate maj. (change)
Holborn and St Pancras		Keir Starmer, Labour	Andrew Feinstein	2nd	18.9%	11,572, 30.0% (-15.6pts)
Bethnal Green and Stepney		Rushanara Ali, Labour	Ajmal Masroor	2nd	30.5%	1,689, 3.6% (-29.9pts)
Ilford North		Wes Streeting, Labour	Leanne Mohamad	2nd	32.2%	528, 1.2% (-20.7pts)
Birmingham Ladywood		Shabana Mahmood, Labour	Akmed Yakoob	2nd	33.2%	3,421, 9.3% (-40.5pts)
Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley		Tahir Ali, Labour	Shakeel Afsar	2nd	17.2%	5,656, 17.6% (-36.3pts)
			Mohammad Hafeez	3rd	14.8%
Chingford and Woodford Green		Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative	Faiza Shaheen	3rd	25.7%	4,758, 9.8% (+7.2pts)
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In Chingford and Woodford Green, the incumbent Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith - whose constituency was marginal in 2019, and consequently was at very high risk of losing his seat (with initial BBC election night coverage suggesting he less than a 1% chance of holding it) - retained his seat with an increased majority. This was due to the left-wing vote being split; Labour had deselected its original candidate Faiza Shaheen, who stood for the party in the seat in 2019, over her social media activity. The reaction to this was of intense anger, and Shaheen announced she would mount an independent run; she came a close third to the Labour candidate.

The Guardian noted that in Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, previously perceived as one of Labour's "safest seats", the two independent candidates "won more votes combined than Labour, suggesting the party might have lost if just one independent had stood".

Workers Party of Britain performance

No candidates from the Workers Party were elected. George Galloway lost his Rochdale seat, coming second. He failed to attend the result declaration, where the victorious Paul Waugh was heckled during his speech.

Candidates that kept their deposit

Constituency	Incumbent party/MP		Challenger	Place	Vote share	Winning candidate majority (change)
Birmingham Yardley		Jess Phillips, Labour	Jody McIntyre	2nd		693, 1.9% (-26.9pts)
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Aftermath and analysis

Political reaction

Shockat Adam, the victorious independent in Leicester South, rebuked claims that he would be a 'single-issue' MP, and that he "was very cognisant of making this more than a one-issue campaign", explaining that the housing crisis and waiting times in the NHS were key parts of his campaign. Speaking to The Observer about his victory, he also rejected accusations that the strong Independent showing reflected a rise in "sectarian voting", commenting that "people are doing is exercising their democratic rights for the things that they're concerned about and [those] people in certain positions of power and in the media weaponise terminologies, causing division between communities," citing the election campaign in the seat as "another example of that, when involvement by minorities or involvement in the political system by Muslims is seen as a threat for some reason, whereas all they're doing is exercising their democratic right and being part of the democratic process." He also said that he had encountered "apathy" and "disenfranchisement" on the doorstep, with many voters keen to clarify that Adam was neither from Labour of the Conservatives demonstrating how "just feel that the two parties don't represent them." Adam's campaign rejected claims from Labour that the party's activists had faced "intimidation and harassment" from his campaign.

Many had pointed to controversial views and comments held by the many pro-Gaza independents. Akmed Yakoob in Birmingham Ladywood "was revealed to have made misogynist comments and joked about domestic violence".

Iqbal Mohamed, who was victorious in Dewsbury and Batley, opined that he believed "we have actually taken our democracy back", and that "people have woken up [and are] now looking at what these parties and previous politicians have or have not done and they are making informed decisions". Nevertheless, he spoke of being "hopeful that the Labour government will be fairer than the last Tory government when it comes to investment and levelling up and actually targeting their support to the more deprived areas across the UK."

Mish Rahman, a member of Labour's National Executive Committee - the party's ruling body - recounts feeling embarrassed at being openly affiliated with, and encouraging close family to vote for, Labour and "lays the blame for the decline in Muslim voting for Labour squarely at the door of the Labour leader", with Muslim voters feeling "betrayed" by the party in Labour moving more towards the policy on Israel supported by both the (then-Conservative-led) British and American governments. He claimed that the party is "institutionally Islamophobic" with an "anti-Muslim slant", but that it was part of a "clear hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party" in which Islamophobia was not "taken as seriously" as it should be, and not "limited to its response to events in Gaza".

Left-wing political commentator Owen Jones argued that the success of candidates running on a pro-Palestinian platform could allow Labour MPs on the left to be more vocal on the issue, and other concerns prioritised by likeminded voters, and thus stymie the leadership's ostensible attempts to "purge" the left as they aim to avoid further losses of support and elected representatives.

Media commentary

Christian Edwards of CNN said that "while a surge in votes for independents elsewhere denied Labour a victory in areas they were expected to win" and "rais[ed] questions about its foreign policy positions", there was only a "small dent in its otherwise huge majority". The scale of the threat was contrasted by The Guardian's Josh Halliday, who compared the possible hardship Labour may have in rewinning trust among Muslim voters to the party's struggle to regain footholds in their erstwhile bastion of the red wall - ex-industrial areas in the North of England - prior to major losses there in 2019, commenting that "it is striking how closely the Muslim community's desertion of Labour resembles the collapse across the 'red wall' [which], too, was about voters feeling taken for granted and it was an erosion in support catalysed in the second half of the last decade by Brexit, Corbyn and Boris Johnson. Gaza has had a similarly profound effect". The Guardian also noticed such comparison and that in 2019, "while surrounding bricks in the 'red wall' fell to the Tories, Blackburn looked rock solid – credited, at least in part, to the loyalty of south Asian voters."

Luke Tryl, the director of polling and campaign group More in Common, spoke on Twitter of the risk of assuming Labour's response to the war in Gaza was the "sole cause" of Muslim voters drifting away from the party, and also made a comparison to how "Brexit act[ed] as a trigger for Red Wall voters leaving Labour" rather than being the single reason why, citing focus groups he conducted in which Muslim voters voiced their opinion - and the "broader point" - that Labour were taking them "for granted [and] their communities had been neglected", in a similar way in which Red Wall voters spoke of the party after the Brexit referendum. He made the point that the 'Gaza Independents' making Gaza the forefront of their campaigns fomented that they were "more likely to [be] see[n] as proper champions for their community who'd stand up for them [and] not the Labour Party", in a similar way to how the Conservatives made delivering Brexit the centrepiece of their 2019 election campaign and thus made significant inroads into historical Labour strongholds, the party having repositioned in favour of a second referendum and thus - as with Muslim voters and the party's position over Gaza - engendered a narrative that core voters were not "being listened to". Prior to the election, political scientist Tariq Modood commented that while Palestine is a "long-term issue" with Muslims, "right now it has a very powerful immediacy", and Muslim "identification with the cause is intergenerational — it extends to older Muslims, middle-aged Muslims and young Muslims. There is a deep concern and hurt in how the west has ignored the injustice of Palestinians in favour of supporting Israel."

Aleem Maqbool, religion editor for BBC News also drew a contrast between Labour's success among Jewish and Muslim voters, specifically with how the party has improved its performance among the former in light of the antisemitism allegations that dogged the party's previous leadership while it loses support and "trust" among the latter group - especially in light of the significance of the 7 October attacks - and how Labour's response is viewed - in different ways to, and by, both religious groups. Sam Ashworth-Hayes of The Telegraph suggested that the "most significant result" from the general election was not the performances of the Conservative and Reform parties, and the split in the right-wing vote both contributed to, but "the return of sectarian politics to England". He wrote that the results had "proven Suella Braverman right" when she had "warned that multiculturalism had failed, allowing people to live 'parallel lives'", and Britain's "high levels of immigration and at best imperfect integration" leading to the "creation of enclaves with very different interests to the country around them [and] without assimilation aligning the interests of communities, democratic politics can become a simple function of which particular group happens to be the largest in any area". While conceding that it is not the case "Gaza is not central to our national politics", it was the election's "defining election" for a "significant minority" and concluded that "elections [being] fought on the basis of narrow issues appealing to the interests of specific groups rather than broader issues of concern to Britain as a whole [...] should be a wake-up call to us all", citing the example of centuries-long sectarianism in Northern Ireland and urban Scotland.

Political historian Lewis Baston wrote that the "disaffection of the Muslim vote was an example of a broader pattern in 2024: the failure of either of the big parties (the Conservatives dramatically, and Labour somewhat) to build large, inclusive coalitions of voters around the dividing line of a choice of government", the results showing that "[c]ommunities broke away on political issues and identities — the Reform UK vote was at least as identitarian as the Gaza independent vote, metropolitan liberals (and some Muslims, as in Huddersfield) opted for the Greens, and even the Liberal Democrats were providing campaigning local representatives rather than offering to form a government".

Overall impact on Labour vote share

Labour's vote share "f[e]ll on average by 10 points in seats where more than 10 percent of the population identify as Muslim". Analysis by Owen Winter and James Fransham for The Economist demonstrated that Labour lost "one percentage point from its vote share in constituencies that it held (notionally) for every 500 or so Muslim constituents". Data from More in Common showed that constituencies with a higher adult Muslim population saw relatively proportionally larger declines in Labour vote share. Research by Lewis Baston found that in the twenty-one seats where over 30% of the population is Muslim, Labour's share of the vote dropped from an average of 65% in 2019 to 36% - with the total number of Labour votes more than halving between the two elections there - and turnout also "fell more steeply than average" in these seats, which he inferred to mean "some disaffected Muslim electors abstained while others voted for other candidates". Labour, despite this, "remained the largest single party in the most Muslim parts of Britain", and claimed that the "most effective electoral challenge came from locally sourced independent candidates" as opposed to the Workers Party or Greens.

Baston also remarked that Labour candidates with a more active record on the issue of Gaza saw a reduced swing against them, citing Jess Phillips - who resigned as a Shadow Cabinet minister over the party's position - holding onto her seat, as well as with candidate seen as less close to the leadership, with the example in London constituencies of left-wing Apsana Begum suffering a substantially reduced swing against her in contrast to Rushanara Ali, seen as closer to the leadership.

Change in party vote share among Asian voters
party	year		votes	change
Labour	2019		56%	-13%
	2024		43%
Greens	2019		3%	+8%
	2024		11%
Minor parties /independents	2019		1%	+9%
	2024		10%

Patrick Flynn of Focaldata found that "the share of Muslim voters in a constituency was highly predictive of vote losses for Labour", and that five of the seven seats the party lost "were places where Muslims made up over a quarter of the population". Data also showed that Labour "fell back – at times substantially – with ethnic minority voters" at the election, dropping 13pts to 43% among Asian voters - the largest drop among all ethnic groups - with the Greens and others (minor parties and independents) seeing their vote share grow from near-negligible in 2019 to 11% and 10% respectively. However, Ben Walker, data journalist at Britain Elects/The New Statesman and Labour councillor for Chester, wrote on social media that Labour losing around 20 points nationally among Muslim voters - according to pre-election polls - would not have "given us those losses to independents", and such falls in vote share among Muslims in areas in which Independents performed well or won were "undoubtedly greater", suggesting Labour's loss in support among Muslims was compounded by other factors polls were unable to capture. Luke Tryl hypothesised that there was a polling miss akin to that which significantly underestimated Akmed Yakoob's performance in the West Midlands mayoral election two months prior.

Solutions

Lewis Baston suggested that Labour's ability to repair relationships with Muslim voters during the third term of the 1997-2010 Labour government, the party having suffered at the 2005 election due to voter backlash over the Iraq War - "from Muslim voters’ point of view, the foreign policy offer may have been tainted and less than perfect, but the domestic record was good enough to feel positive again about the party that was by that time led by Gordon Brown" - could offer a springboard from which to do so this time. Nevertheless, he admitted there were other forces that saw Labour recover with Muslims during that time - such as a shift in policy direction under Nick Clegg's leadership of the Liberal Democrats, which throughout the early 2000s was a repository of voter anger over Iraq, as well as the public split of the Respect party - and the "carriers of the banner in 2024, by contrast, are five disparate independent candidates — four Muslim, plus Corbyn", who "make up a parliamentary force potentially equal to Reform UK, but have attracted far less media coverage" and it "remains to be seen how most of these individuals act and the extent to which they coordinate with each other [given] there may be unity on the issue of Palestine" but not on domestic issues and policy, and it may prove to be the case that they are less threatening to the Labour government on the latter.

Baston suggested that the long-term impacts of a Labour government on domestic issues may go some way to overriding the short-term urgency of a vote over Palestine, and that "[t]o many Muslims in 2024, the balance to be struck was between a gesture of support for Palestine and advancing the domestic policy agenda [as] many seem to have felt Palestine was urgent and that Labour's domestic offer was not appealing enough (and that other voters would ensure a change of government anyway)".

See also

• Islington North in the 2024 United Kingdom general election
• Respect Party

External links

• Haroon, Siddique (7 July 2024). Who are the pro-Gaza independents who unseated Labour MPs?. The Guardian
• Goodier, Michael (7 July 2024). Explainer: Rise of smaller parties: key takeaways from voting patterns in UK election. The Guardian