Much of the focus of this year’s local elections will understandably be on the spectacular Reform UK surge and the evisceration of the Conservative Party. Yet another story deserves significant attention: Labour’s troubles in North West England provide a further indication that the pro-Gaza independent movement is gathering pace.

In Lancashire, Labour was faced with a so-called “triple threat” in the shape of Reform UK, the Green Party, and a batch of pro-Gaza independent candidates. As well as losing a raft of seats to Reform UK — which wrested control of the county council from the Tories — the governing party lost one to Gaza-focused Green Party candidate Sohail Asghar, while Muslim independent challengers had a field day more widely.

In Burnley, Labour suffered two losses to Usman Arif and Maheen Kamran. Arif had previously ended his membership of the Labour Party over the leadership’s position on the conflict in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Kamran, an aspiring medical student, has called for more public spaces which eradicate “free mixing” between men and women. Over in Preston, independent candidates were elected in the City and South East wards (Yousuf Motala and Almas Razakazi, respectively).

In the Borough of Pendle, Azhar Ali — who was embroiled in an antisemitism row which resulted in the Labour Party withdrawing its support for him as their candidate in the February 2024 Rochdale parliamentary by-election — won with a majority of 874 votes in Nelson East. In Brierfield and Nelson West, pro-Gaza independent candidate Mohammed Iqbal won 66% of the vote; the Labour candidate, in contrast, came in below 6%. With all 84 seats declared, Muslim independents now outnumber Labour on Lancashire County Council, with the number of Labour councillors dropping by 27 to just five.

Following Noor Jahan Begum’s local by-election victory in the Redbridge ward of Mayfield back in March, the pro-Gaza independent movement has kept its momentum going. The worst is yet to come for Labour, with the next round of English local elections scheduled to take place in cities such as Birmingham and Bradford, the Greater Manchester towns of Oldham and Bolton, as well as Blackburn and Darwen in Lancashire.

In relatively deprived Muslim-concentrated areas, a winning formula of Left-leaning economics, socially conservative values, and support for Palestinian statehood among independent candidates is shattering Labour’s traditional electoral dominance. The Israel-Hamas conflict may well have been the trigger, but there are many British Muslim voters who have grown disillusioned with Labour because the party is perceived to be unresponsive to local bread-and-butter concerns, such as a lack of economic opportunities, underperforming public services, and anti-social behaviour fuelled by substance abuse. And that is before going into the tensions between conventional Islamic morality and the radical cultural liberalism which prevails in the modern Labour Party.

Lancashire may have provided a snapshot of the UK’s electoral future — one of identitarian voting based on group interests. While the Labour government may seek to rebuild ties with British Muslim communities by being seen to act on Islamophobia, this alone is unlikely to bring them back. In the eyes of many British Muslims, the war in Gaza is more important than local issues and there is nothing the PM can do or say to atone for appearing to support Israel’s military actions following Hamas’s 7 October attacks.

With the cultural and electoral trajectory of British Muslims differing to much of the general population, identitarian factionalism is clearly here to stay in modern British democracy.

---

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a researcher specialising in British ethnic minority socio-political attitudes, with a particular focus on the effects of social integration and intergroup relations.

 

rakibehsan

---