Last July, four independent candidates in heavily-Muslim seats were elected to Parliament, capitalising on the frustration that many Muslim voters felt with the Labour Party’s position on Gaza.
In these Labour heartlands, changing demographics have resulted in changing political priorities — and the size of the Muslim population has reached a critical mass, at which Muslim voters no longer need to press their concerns through a national party.
To some extent, this is nothing new. For decades, Muslim voters exercised disproportionate influence over our politics through the Labour Party. Through effective political organisation and lobbying, the Muslim community was able to make itself a core feature of Labour’s support in London, Birmingham and the post-industrial North. Muslim support for Labour candidates was rewarded, through Labour’s advocacy for the issues that matter to Muslims. In this sense, the Muslim voting bloc operated no differently to other special interest groups — much ink has been spilled about the Tory Party’s traditional reliance on the so-called “grey vote”.
But from time to time, Muslim voters also organised themselves outside the auspices of the Labour Party. In 2004, a coalition of Muslim community leaders and far-left activists formed the Respect Party, which was unofficially aligned with both the Muslim Association of Britain and the Socialist Workers Party. At the 2005 General Election, George Galloway was elected as Respect’s candidate in heavily-Muslim Bethnal Green, with further gains made in the 2006 and 2007 local elections. In 2012, Galloway won again in Bradford West, completing his by-election trifecta with a victory in Rochdale last year. In each case, Galloway channeled Muslim frustration with events overseas — the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, the war in Gaza — to win a surprise victory in a safe Labour seat.
And in Tower Hamlets, divisions within the local Labour Party led Muslim councillors to form Tower Hamlets First in 2014, organised around the infamous Lutfur Rahman. THF was composed almost exclusively of Bangladeshi activists, who sought to promote Rahman’s re-election campaign — a campaign which would eventually be found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices. With Rahman temporarily banned from seeking public office, THF fell dormant, but was reconstituted as “Aspire” ahead of the 2022 elections which, despite his murky past, Rahman won handily.
But these are the exceptions which have proven the traditional rule. Galloway and Rahman are both individually impressive politicians, who were able to marshall Muslim voters against the Labour Party through effective organisation and favourable timing. What’s striking about the most recent wave of Muslim candidates is that its standard bearers are not particularly impressive. By all accounts, the four sectarian MPs who won in July did not run particularly impressive campaigns, nor are they individually charismatic. Instead, they are now able to rely on widespread support amongst Muslim voters, simply by virtue of the fact that they presume to speak for Muslim interests. Britain’s Muslim community is now so large that it can effectively stand alone, without needing to strike an uneasy compromise with any national party.
Muslim voters no longer need the Labour Party, but many Labour MPs need Muslim voters
Recent events suggest that this phenomenon is here to stay — and it isn’t just about Gaza. Last week, an independent candidate scored a surprise win over Labour in a council by-election in Redbridge. Noor Begum, standing under the “Ilford Independents” banner, ran a campaign which focused on mismanagement of local services and reducing NHS waiting lists. However, for those familiar with the hallmarks of sectarian politics, the undertones of Begum’s campaign were obvious. Her election literature featured the Palestinian flag, prominently displayed at the top of her leaflets. Her attacks on local MP Jas Athwal focused on Labour’s position on Palestine, along with its perceived failure to tackle Islamophobia. She was endorsed, repeatedly and prominently, by campaigning organisation The Muslim Vote.
Whilst Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas provides a convenient rallying point for Muslim candidates, sectarian politicians are not restricting their activism to the realm of foreign policy. To take just a single example, new Dewsbury MP Iqbal Mohamed has spent plenty of time campaigning on Gaza and Kashmir — but has also used Parliamentary time to condemn the response to the grooming gang scandal and defend the importance of cousin marriage. Sectarian independents might focus disproportionately on foreign affairs, but they have also identified that Muslim voters have discrete interests, around justice, culture and even finance.
This rapid migration of Muslim voters towards independent candidates has not gone unnoticed. In constituencies with a large number of Muslim voters, Labour politicians are engaged in a guerilla campaign against the threat of insurgent independents. Last November, Labour MP Tahir Ali urged Keir Starmer to institute new laws which would criminalise criticism of the Qur’an or the Prophet Muhammad. Just last week, a group of twenty Labour MPs petitioned the Prime Minister of Pakistan to build a new airport in Mirpur, the ancestral homeland of a majority of Britain’s Pakistani population.
These bizarre interventions can only be explained by understanding Labour’s precarious position in heavily-Muslim seats. Muslim voters no longer need the Labour Party, but many Labour MPs need Muslim voters. Like it or not, Britain is now a country in which national parties compete with explicitly sectarian candidates for the support of particular religious and ethnic groups.
This should not come as a surprise. In many diverse democracies around the world, this is the norm. Rather than voting on the basis of material interests or ideological priors, individuals vote in accordance with their perceived group interests, seeking power and resources in a zero-sum competition.
But in Great Britain, until the advent of mass migration, this kind of sectarian competition had largely been consigned to history, with the exception of Northern Ireland. The sorry events of the 20th century in Northern Ireland shows where sectarian politics can lead: to social division, ghettoisation and violence. Fail to counter the root cause of sectarian politics in Britain, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see the same trends take hold.
