Political Islam is now a feature of British elections: Gaza is just the symptom, not the cause

Telegraph

03-05-2025

Reform's strength now poses perhaps a greater threat to Labour even than to the Conservatives. Contained within Thursday's results, however, is another threat to the party – but one which, unlike the Reform surge, builds on a development evident since last year's general election. That threat is the rise of independent Muslim candidates on platforms designed to appeal to their fellow Muslims.
Last July showed the pattern when 'Gaza independent' MPs won in Leicester South, Blackburn, Birmingham Perry Barr and Dewsbury and Batley, after similar candidates had won two months earlier in local elections in Blackburn, Bradford and Oldham. That pattern was confirmed on Thursday.
In the general election Labour's vote fell by over 14 per cent from 2019 in constituencies where the Muslim population was above 15 per cent. Overall, 37 constituencies have a Muslim population of over 20 per cent, and in another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. Thursday's results demonstrate again that sectarian Muslim candidates can either win or secure enough votes in such seats to pose a real threat to Labour.
In Burnley Central East, for example, Maheen Kamran won with 38 per cent of the vote, beating Reform on 30 per cent. Labour trailed in third with just 14 per cent – down from 49 per cent in 2021. Ms Kamran says she wants 'segregated areas' to prevent 'free mixing' between men and women. She is joined on Lancashire County Council by her fellow independent Usman Arif from Burnley North East, who left Labour over the Gaza war.
Azhar Ali, dumped as Labour's candidate in last year's Rochdale by-election, won in Pendle. Ali was removed by Labour after he had been recorded making insinuations about 'certain Jewish quarters' in the media and had said Isael 'allowed' the October 7 Hamas massacre to happen to justify a war in Gaza.
It is no longer a prediction but a statement of fact that Britain has sectarian politics. The rise of Reform has led to much commentary about the shattering of political assumptions. But Reform merely challenges the existing party system. The emergence of sectarian politics challenges the foundations of our democratic norms. It is not so much identity politics as theocratic politics.
This is not some organic development in the wake of the Gaza war, in the narrative pushed by the independents, but rather a long-planned and well co-ordinated move to push Islamist politics into the mainstream. Gaza energised it and gave it cut through, but the real story is the creation of The Muslim Vote, an umbrella alliance of 24 activist groups which promotes and endorses selected candidates. The Muslim Vote has a long policy agenda, of which Israel and Gaza is merely one. Others – there are eighteen in all – include the legal adoption of a new definition of Islamophobia and reform of Ofcom's rules on extremism.
Labour's huge majority in 2024 masked how fragile many of its wins were, but Thursday's local elections have put the fear of God into Labour MPs. It is going to get worse. Next year there will be London-wide elections. Aspire (a de facto Bangladeshi party) already controls Tower Hamlets; last July Labour's Rushanara Ali clung on narrowly in Bethnal Green. Boroughs like Redbridge and Newham are also prime territory for sectarian candidates. Health Secretary Wes Streeting only just held his seat by 528 votes in July and in Birmingham, which will also vote, Jess Phillips scraped home by around 700 votes.
The insidious impact of sectarian politics is that MPs with small majorities will tack to embrace their demands to try to head off the threat – and thus start to act as sanitised advocates for Islamist ideas, pushing them into the mainstream and changing not just politics but our country itself.